Sodastuck
by Jaxson The Great
Summary: Welcome to Doc's Diner where the food is cheap, the employees are eye candy, and romance is in the air! But Trolls and Humans are very different creatures, and their co-existence is experiencing a little turbulence. Will the two races ever see eye-to-eye, or will their differences keep them apart? Rated for language.
1. Dirk

Monday afternoons were always slow at Doc's. A few customers here and there, but nowhere near the lunch or breakfast rush. Mostly, there was a handful or two of students, dropping in for a shake or a quick game of pinball before heading home.

Most of the kids at the local schools were regulars at Doc's. They liked it all, from the arcade machines in the corner to the younger wait staff—there were next to no adults on the payroll.

On this particular Monday, the diner was actually a little crowded, but comfortably. Even the round tables by the front window, only two chairs each, were occupied, and the place was a quiet cacophony of voices.

But I didn't have to pay attention to them, or to their noise, or their complaints, or their weird Human vs. Troll cliques. In fact, I didn't have to pay attention to anyone, unless they came to my counter. And since no one had, I occupied myself with watching the group by the large side window, the one with the fancy paint job I'd done myself, the one that read DOC'S DINER in green and white.

The afternoon sunlight shone down through the glass, reflecting brightly off the white Formica tabletop and making their cheeks glow.

There were four at that booth, though it could easily have seated six, eight at the most. Two I knew well and two I'd seen only from afar.

Dave and John—best friends; I envied them (and from what I'd heard, I wasn't the only one)—and two of their school friends, Karkat and Sollux. Recognizable by their horns, though from the back they looked nearly identical. But even though I had never met either of them, it was obvious who they were.

Karkat was the one wearing ragged blacks and bright reds, Doc Martins and week-old hairspray. Sollux, however, was wearing pink and yellow and blue, and a pair of paper 3-D glasses. Usually I'd abhor those childish things, but somehow this kid made them work.

John. What a dork. Blue argyle and brown corduroy with a collared shirt and brown loafers. Who did he think he was, Beaver Cleaver? And Dave, form-fitting white sweater with a big red D on the front. Practically a billboard, the little slut.

That's my brother for you.

They were missing a few of their usual crew, though. Jade and Rose—where were they? Probably still at school—Jade at a flute lesson, maybe, and Rose… I'd bet anything Rose was prepping the teachers on the next English unit. Or maybe she'd been hired on as a teacher herself—Troll Sex 101. She was basically an expert. At least, that's what I heard. I couldn't tell you who from. I can't keep all Dave's little friends straight. All Trolls look more or less the same, to me.

I watched the four of them talk and laugh and throw sugar packets at each other as I absently wiped down my counter. They were all such good friends. I'd never had friends like that. At home, Dave barely talked to me, always shutting himself in his room to pester John or whoever. Lil' Cal was pretty much my only real friend in the whole world.

Dave penned something on the tabletop. John turned like a sunflower to catch the sunbeams on his face. Sollux and Karkat took turns inventing vulgar phrases indicating the act of falling down stairs—I could hear them clearly from three tables away.

An average Monday afternoon at Doc's.

But wait—something was wrong. Dave was coolly flipping Karkat off. John was cleaning a smudge off his glasses. But beneath the table… I spied Dave's red trainer entwining with John's loafer. And… were John's cheeks pinker than usual? And was that a smirk tugging at my bro's mouth?

I had to investigate. Make sure I wasn't just seeing things.

I could head over and... and ask Dave if he had any homework. No. Wait. Better to keep my distance. Maybe mop up an imaginary spill? Get under the table for good measure? God _damn _it, why was raising a kid so much harder than raising robots? If Dave had been made of titanium or iron or steel or whatever, if his heart had been plutonium or something, I would know how to fix him, make him more manageable. At the very least I'd understand him. As it was, the best I could do was constantly try to head him off at the pass.

I reached for the mop. Took two steps-

"Hey, Dirk!"

Oh. God.

Not him. Not now.

I turned slowly, and there he was, in all his ridiculous glory.

Was it really that late? A glance at the clock over by the ancient jukebox confirmed-4:13, right on the dot. God, he was cute when he was punctual. Which was always.

"Nice bowtie," he said, smirking, as if he would ever have the stones to wear one himself. As it was, he was all dolled up in his usual style; a polo shirt the color of a mocha mint milkshake, jeans more green than blue, and a pair of Chucks, well-worn and complete with a few blades of grass poking out from the soles. I would have hardly been surprised if the guy had brought Bambi in with him, he looked so... "outdoors-y".

"The usual?" I asked him, all business, all class, as he sat at my counter and stared at me encouragingly, ready for me to perform my daily magic trick, as I always did.

I shot a glance at my bro-was that his hand I saw slipping down to grip John's?-before turning around to busy myself with making a cup of tea for my (boy)friend.

Tea wasn't really a popular beverage at Doc's; most of the kids frequenting the place preferred sodas and shakes. But Doc was a fan, so he insisted we offer it, and insisted the soda jerk-namely, me-be the one to make it.

I'm sure he knew Jake was pretty much the only customer to ever order it, and I'm sure he knew about our romcom excuse for a relationship, too.

That Doc Scratch, he was a meddler. Not as bad as Andrew, but still.

Speaking of Andrew, I noticed the guy finally get around to taking his shift while I waited for the water to boil. That loser is so lazy, it's a wonder Doc ever hired him. Other than Doc himself, he was the oldest employee we had, and no one liked him. And I mean _no one._ I'm pretty sure the only reason anyone put up with him is because he wore the girls' uniform for some reason, and he looked ridiculous in it, which, in this case, is synonymous with hilarious.

I watched him bumble through his various chores. Sweeping, dusting, washing, cleaning, and all in that stupid skirt with the cap sleeves, black bowtie, and matching apron.

Watching Andrew, I suspected, was a lot like watching a gangly seahorse learn how to walk.

The water was ready. I steeped a bag of tea in it as I prepared the cup-a little white one with a green rim and handle, and a saucer to match. That Doc, he was one consistent man. Uh... thing. Man? Anyway, he was consistent. Pretty much everything in the diner was green and white; striped walls, checkered floors, white and green chairs, tables, dishes, silverware...

Luckily, I happened to be a fan of green.

I gave Jake his tea, and watched him take a sip. Two sips.

"Have you done something different?" He asked, looking like a puppy who'd lost his bone. "This tastes..."

"It's pumpkin," I told him. So cute. So clueless. Behind him, Dave's tongue was practically in John's ear, and both Trolls had managed to absorb themselves with staring out the window.

Good friends. Wish I had some. Wish my _real _family-my robots-could work, too. As it is, I'm not allowed to let them out of the apartment much, except on the roof, and if it were me (aw, who am I kidding, they _are _me) I would have been going crazy, cooped up all the time.

"Pumpkin tea? Kind of out of season, isn't it?"

Sometimes I think Jake revels in being impertinent.

I said something about it being refreshing, or I thought I did. I'm not sure. My ears were hearing Derse and my head was full of the green smell of him and my eyes were on Dave, who chose that moment to get up, pulling John after him, and make a beeline for the bathroom.

I was all on Earth then. No time for distractions when there's a Bro-related disaster to avert. I pushed away from my counter, away from my perfect idiot, and headed around, bracing myself for whatever was to come. There was no time to plan; I'd just have to improvise.

Oblivious to me, Dave neared, John's sleeve pinched in his grasp, John himself looking excited and confused. Dave kind of had that effect on people; sweet-talking them into doing things without telling them anything at all. Maybe that was how he had so many friends.

I was four steps away from them. Three. One.

I stepped in front of them, and Dave looked up, noticing me for the first time. The ignorant bastard, he probably hadn't even noticed I was working that day.

And he wonders why he can never best me in a fight.

"Bro," he said, sounding irritated, which I knew was his way of masking confusion. "I'm not-"

I said something-I don't even know what-but it was drowned out by the sound of a boor banging open, and a high-pitched shriek.

The noise level in the diner went from moderate to low, low, low as everyone turned to look. I thought it would be the people renting out the rooms above the diner. I had no idea what they used them for-some sort of detective agency, I guess. Those guys were constantly running around and freaking out, throwing keys and lipstick around.

But it wasn't them, it was Jane, bursting from the kitchen, hair messier than usual, glasses askew, eyes wide in panic.

"Dirk," she gasped, spotting me. "Something's on fire!"

I sighed inwardly. Not because she was always catching things on fire, but because everyone seemed to think I was the guy to call in the event of an emergency, even though all I knew how to do was make shakes and zone out on Derse and build friends out of spare parts. Pathetic, really.

But, yeah, you'd think a direct descendant of Betty Crocker herself would know how to put out a fire.

I shot a glance at Andrew-can't he help?-but he was just standing there, leaning on the jukebox, which was creakily emitting something vaguely resembling music.

Can't you put it out yourself?" I snapped at Jane, after Andrew's unblinking stare creeped me out and made me look away. She shook her head woefully.

"I tried," she moaned, "But water only made it _worse!_"

Ugh. I motioned to Dave-_stay_- before heading in. On the bright side, playing hero for innocent little Janey was sure to win me some points with Jake.

The kitchen was nice... for a diner. No chickens or apples. But, strangely enough, everything in it was either red or blue, without a hint of green anywhere. Weird.

The fire was billowing in a pan on the stove. A grease fire-just as I'd suspected. A lid clamped over it snuffed it right out, and the Diner was saved.

Although it had only taken a second or two, I hurried back out, sure I'd have to chase Dave down again. That, or find he'd found and broken into my condom stash again at home. Maybe it would have been better to just let them have it out in the bathroom at Doc's. At least that way I could keep an eye on them, more or less.

To my utter amazement, he was still there, right where I'd left him.

Well... almost. He had one arm hooked around John-the catch of the day-and the rest of him was engaged in the fine art of woman-catching. I came out just in time to see John give his sister(-ish thing) a feeble wave.

Seriously-HOW DOES THIS GUY HAVE FRIENDS?

Once the whole ordeal was over, once I'd pried my drooling brother(-ish thing) off of our chef and explained to her how to deal with grease fires, I was finally able to abscond back behind my counter, where Jake made me promise to keep making him pumpkin tea (yesss). Dave and John returned to their Troll friends, and the four of them left soon after.

Once they had gone, Meenah, one of our newest waitresses, brought me a note Dave had left behind.

"Rustblood pointyface," she called me. At least it was better than the previous "Triangle sight spheres".

"Your genetically identical bucket slimespawn left you this," she said, handing me the note, which read BRO in big block letters on the front.

Refraining from trying to work out weather she had just called Dave the Troll equivalent of my son, I opened the note.

_Dude. Is she single?_

Wow. What class, Dave. What a total fucking whore you are.

When I got home, I found he'd ravaged my condoms anyway.


	2. Terezi

Doc's was a great place.

At least, that's what everyone at school always said. But I hated it there.

They said the food was good and the employees were cool/funny/cute/relatives and the upstairs tenants were hilarious and the karaoke nights were worth God Tiering for.

But all I ever noticed was the smell.

Lemon-lime glue striped over with chalky vanilla dust, Rubbery peach sorbet Human skin and leathery plum Troll. Plastic chairs, sticky with syrupy green. Painted glass that clogged my nose with the sweet bitterness of burning butter.

It smelled _awful._

I went there a lot, though, because all my friends liked to hang out there a lot after school, and it was, admittedly, kind of fun to try to guess which employee was which based on their uniforms.

Every employee at Doc's Diner wore potato starch white, and the waiters wore licorice-charcoal pants. Their identities were made evident to me through their brightly colored bowties, suspenders, and, for the ladies, aprons.

Their colors smelled delicious. The girls were like pink lemonade and cherry chocolate and fancy sparkling water and spun sugar, and the boys were curry and cloves and artificial flavoring and mangoes, freshly cut.

The mangoes were Dirk. Not quite as mouthwatering as strawberry-cherry-persimmon Dave, but a Strider was a Strider was a Strider, and I had yet to meet one whose scent was disagreeable.

So the people were okay. Fine, even. But the white and green of Doc's itself reeked, like lies and deceit and pretentious omniscience.

.

At first it was just the four of us: Karkat, Sollux, Nepeta and I. Karkat and I had English 2 together, and Nepeta had English 1, right next door. We met up after class and headed out, preparing to hang out at Doc's for a while before heading elsewhere, to while away the time until the Alternian sun flickered out on our hemisphere, so we could go home. But then Nepeta pulled in Equius, who was also in her class, and Gamzee joined out of nowhere, bringing Tavros, and by the time we got there we had also managed to accumulate Eridan and Jade.

It was almost like old times. If, you know, I hadn't been blind and Tavros had been unviolated and Gamzee didn't scare anyone and Nepeta didn't need Equius to function and Jade had been one of us. But, you know, other then that it was exactly like old times.

Doc's was kind of busy that day. Walking in, it smelled like the hallways at school, minus the angst and plus the smell of cooking meat. People were walking in every direction, trailing mists of cream and butter and orange and lemon and vinegar and coffee and cilantro and poppyseed, voices loud and blurring together with the music and sound blasting and zapping from the arcade games lined up along the left wall, as well as the jukebox, which only played things in a crackly, muffled voice.

Karkat found a booth for us by the door. It was already taken by a couple of Humans, but he scared them off, and we managed to just squeeze everyone in, stowing our bags underneath. I ended up by the window, penned in by lemon-blueberry-fennel Jade and across from blackberry cordial Gamzee and ginger-paprika-cinnamon-pepper Karkat.

"So how have you guys been?" Jade began, her shoepolish and asphalt hair brushing my face as she flicked it over her shoulder. "I feel like it's been _sweeps_ since we got everyone together."

"This is _hardly_ 'everyone'," Eridan sniffed, his voice coming to me from somewhere beyond Jade, "and _you_ are hardly part of 'everyone', you pretentiously jade-blooded, moss encrusted cloaca."

Several noises of minor offence followed this fact, though no one quite knew what a cloaca was. It was probably a seadweller thing. I had a feeling that if Feferi had been there, she would have been properly offended.

As it was, Eridan, clearly disappointed with our lack of comprehension, continued, "Furthermore, you Humans and your ridiculous measurement of time have no place to be throwing around terms like '_sweep_' when you have no way of even coming _close_ to comprehending how long a sweep actually is."

Jade shrank against me as he spoke, and I could smell embarrassment coming off her, like an ammonia cloud staining the air.

"Shut up, shitsponge," Karkat snapped. "We aren't here for your stupid highblood racism, and this isn't your precious show, _Highbloods at High Tide_, alright, bulgescrape?"

"Hey," Gamzee said suddenly, turning away from the bright window, which he had been staring through (at? I couldn't tell) the entire time. "_Highbloods_ is a quality show, brother."

Equius made a sound of agreement while Karkat snorted and muttered "Must be an idiot thing".

We were silent then, and I lost track of time. A garlic and cheese waitress who was actually a male Human I didn't know but wore the waitress uniform all the same came and went. We ate diner-y things, fries and shakes and sundaes and pie. Nepeta and Equius faded into the background, their voices and scents more blurry than usual. Gamzee slurped chocolate milk, head lowered enough that his bangs-long, sunbaked curls of tar-touched the rim of his glass. Beside him, Karkat munched fries, dipping them first into something new, a bright, salty red. I stole a few, and reveled in the sensory contrast of hot yellow grease and cool red somethingnew. I myself had ordered a plain dish of vanilla ice cream, which cooled me from the inside out, freezing my tastemuscle and burning my teeth. The ice white was more cold than flavor, but the surrounding smells would have been too much if it weren't.

After a while, Tavros spoke up, but he was three bodies away and I couldn't smell him at all. Every smell kept changing with my surroundings, and all manner of colors were bouncing back at me from the reflection of the window beside me, and every movement Karkat or Gamzee or Jade made wafted different smells toward me, so strong that I couldn't tell, scent-wise, that anything existed beyond our table.

"I, uh," began Tavros' voice, at the same time that something touched my leg under the table, "um, actually, did you guys hear about the, uh," it touched me again, more insistently. I kicked it, and it kicked me back, hard. I concluded 'it' to be Gamzee's leg, and I gave myself a mental pat on the back for not having to lick anything to figure it out. "The crimes that have been, um, happening, lately? Like, at night?"

Fucking Gamzee. I shot him a face, and didn't bother waiting for a reaction.

"Crimes?" I said, as his foot pinned mine to the wall. "What kind of crimes? _Illegal _crimes?" I reached down, feigning an itch, and punched him square in the knee, which was a lot closer than it had any business being, due to his stupidly long legs and the way he had slouched down in his seat. His knee was also very _pointy_, and I could almost _taste_ his gloating smirk when I scowled in pain and shook out my hand.

"No, uh, I think it's more like breaking and entering? I guess?" Tavros was saying. I was almost listening. Gamzee's harsh scent, all black cherry and cheap sugar and stale air, was invading my sniffnodes.

"Like, there's just someone who keeps breaking into all these shops and stores and stuff, but nothing ever gets stolen. I mean, uh, that's what I heard, anyway..."

"It's a mewstery!" Nepeta cried, adding a certain energy to the group that had been absent before. "Purrhaps we should furrm a ritualistic bicornbeast hunting patrol and wait in the purraditional furrmations to discofurr who it is!"

I placed my feet atop Gamzee's, propping my toes on his shins.

"A what?" Jade said, sounding dazed. Poor Jade. It wasn't her fault Humans had such a limited vocabulary.

"Stakeout," I clarified, as the toe of Gamzee's sneaker found the end of my shoelace, trapping it in place as his other foot, with mine still on top, pulled away.

As my shoe was agonizingly slowly untied, Karkat said, "What, here at Doc's?" and his sneer smelled like contempt. "Just hide here until after hours and wait all fucking night in the dark for someone who may or may not even show up? Sounds like a really fucking _great _waste of my time! Let me just grab my fucking portable recooperasack."

Unlike Jade, Nepeta was unfazed by harsh words. She merely shrugged, and I thought I heard her hum a little.

Then we were silent once more, and Gamzee stared passively at (through?) the window as I retied my shoe.

After a few minutes, Eridan spoke up again.

"Well, this has been a _blast, _but _Highbloods_ is gonna start soon." He paused, like he was expecting some big reaction. When there was none, he said, "Coming, Equ?"

I tuned out of the conversation, thinking instead about the criminal acts Tavros had mentioned. It could have been just a dumb rumor, but I couldn't be sure. I never watched Human television. If it had been a big news story, I wouldn't know. I decided to check if my omnivision could even get Human channels when I got home. Not that I ever watched it, for obvious reasons. I could listen to it, I supposed.

Meanwhile, Eridan and Equius had gone, and Gamzee was saying, "...killed off my favorite character last week."

As he said this, his foot was once more engaged in the act of Bothering Me. He slyly scooped my hooves forward with his, his sneakers forming a corral for my saddle shoes. I curled my lip at him.

After a short silence, during which Gamzee and I kicked each other a lot, Karkat said, "Okay, what the FUCK is going on with you two!?"

"Who, me?" I said, at the same time Gamzee did. Damn.

"Yeah," Sollux said, from the other side of Jade. "You two are making a lot of weird faces."

Gamzee's shrug sent a silky wave of mulberry wine over me.

"I dunno about her," he said. "I'm just sitting here."

Wow. Way to throw me under the transportation device, you eternal greasenub.

"How should I know if I'm making a face?" I said. "I'm _blind, _remember?"

Jade laughed at that, and Karkat snorted. Sollux said, "yeah, I'm so sure," and I poked Gamzee's leg as savagely as I dared, earning a sharp kick from him.

"If I were to make _any_ faces, Karkles," I hissed, rubbing my shin, "they would be at you." I winked my flirtiest wink at him, and I could almost taste the sugary stain to his frond nubs. Gamzee kicked me again, and I showed him my teeth. He had no place to be jealous of my matesprit, especially since we were making no secret of our quadrantship. I smiled a coy smile at him and hid it behind the cuff of the jacket I wore, which so happened to be Karkat's varsity qacket.

Nepeta, now sitting beside Karkat, apparantly oblivious of the game of musical quadrants we were playing right beside her, said, "Meow I'm short one fur my roleplay session later."

Tavros said, "Uh, I might be, maybe, a little bit interested in that..."

Gamzee smelled like rotting plums, and Karkat like walnuts and sugar. Gamzee was all dark displeasure, and Karkat was glowing pride.

Nepeta's voice was so bright I could almost smell her scales burning, "Really? _You're _into roleplay, Tavros?!"

I tried not to hate her for conveniently forgetting, as everyone seemed to be, that _I _was into roleplay just as much as the next Troll. More, probably. I winked at Karkat again, and Gamzee jostled my leg with his, vying for attention, and I didn't try to hide the smug grin that slipped out. He was so pathetic when he was jealous.

"Well, uh, I mean, I don't have too much real experience with it with other people, but, um, it might be kinda cool."

"There's so much to teach you, then!" Nepeta cried, sounding distressed. "Oh dear..."

"Actually," said Jade, almost shyly, "I have been known to roleplay, now and then. Maybe I could help? I mean, I don't know much about Troll roleplay, but..."

"That's a lie," I said, and the Human stiffened beside me.

"Which part?" Karkat asked sharply, and I felt five pairs of eyes I couldn't see on me.

"Dunno," I shrugged, "but I can smell it. You smell like deceit, Human." _And I don't want to play your stupid Human roleplay game, anyway, thanks for asking._

She murmured something in a small voice as she went to get up, displacing Sollux on the way. So he got up and let her out, and then sat back down right next to me. He smelled like lemon and ginger and mint and honey and overripe bananas. But his scent wasn't too strong, and with Jade's and Nepeta's and Tavros' aromas gone,I was suddenly attacked on all sides by the putrid sour milk greens and whites of Doc's.

"Whoa, TZ, you don't look so good," Sollux said, peering close to my face, his stale scent, now lemonade-strawberry-copper, invading my space in a way Jade's hadn't. "You're all teal."

"I'm fine," I lied, pushing him away. "I'm just blushing, imagining all the things me and Karkles are going to do later."

"T-Terezi!" Karkat's blush was bright, and I did my best to aim another wink his way. The smell of that place was making me feel like hurling.

Sollux laughed. "Hey, speaking of later, d'you guys want to swing by that arcade over by Strider's?"

I perked my listencones at this. Gaming with Sollux was usually a blast, and I was kind of desperate to get out of Doc's.

"What's wrong with this place?" karkat said, his pomegranate spice cake upper appendage sweeping towards the other end of the diner, where I knew from past investigation that there were a few arcade games including Bonka, Pac-Man, Sam Spade, Tetris, Space Panic, and Hektik.

"This place is OK," Sollux said, "but that other place has Galaga _and _Space Invaders, and they just got a brand new Tomb Raider."

"Whoa," Karkat breathed. "I'm there. Let's go right now."

They got up, and Sollux said, "Coming, Gamz?"

"I'm cool," Gamzee replied, poking gently at my foot with his. "Maybe I'll swing by later."

"Hey!" I blinked at Karkat, or what I hoped was Karkat. He was too far away to be accurate. "What about me!?"

"Terezi..." the sound of his voice helped me correct myself. Damn, how come I can never get it quite right? "You wouldn't want to hang out with us," he said. "It wouldn't be fun."

He was lying. I could smell it, like burning hair.

"Why don't you want me to come?" I was whining, but I couldn't help it.

"The truth is, TZ," Sollux said, "no one really wants to play with you when you lick the screen."

They left, and it took all I had not to scream "I CAN'T READ THINGS UNLESS I LICK THEM," after them. My face felt hot, and my sightless spite orbs burned with tears.

Gamzee must've been staring, but he at least had the decency not to say anything while I rubbed furiously at my face, willing the tears not to fall. We sat in silence for a while, until a salty rock candy waitress I'd never smelled before leaned up against the edge of the table, snapping a berry bubblegum bubble before speaking.

"So're you flushed beakbeasts gonna order, or…?"

"Yeah," Gamzee said with a killer smile. I'm pretty sure all highbloods have naturally seductive smiles. "I would like a bitchy, nosy, unwanted waitress. They got any here?"

She smiled back, like a mouthful of glass, and I smelled poison.

"In that case, babe," she said, "I'm your gill."

They stared each other down for a minute, and then she blew another bubble.

"Got any more stupid-ass greaseblood wisecracks? Or can I go play slave to some other table?"

"Actually," I said, "can I see a menu?"

She handed a greasy laminated thing to me with an impatient flick of her gold bangle-clad wrist, and I wasted no time slathering my tongue all over it.

Suddenly, it was like my eyes had remembered what sight was. Everything my tongue touched was crystal clear, from the forest green background to the salty white text to the little lines through the dollar sign S's to the fancy brackets around the dessert section. I could even see where someone had manually added an extra "Pumpkin" option in orange to the bottom of the tea list.

And the prices! No one had ever told me that Doc's accepted everything from Boondollars to Pounds to Bits to Pieces of Eight, and so much in between! Sight was a beautiful thing! And if I had to see it through the faint teal hue of my own saliva, who cared?

Everyone, apparently.

I made sure to liberally douse every inch of the menu, even going over some parts twice, before handing it back.

"Thanks," I grinned, and Gamzee laughed. Not his usual creepy psychopath killer clown laugh, but an actual laugh, and by the sound of it, I wasn't the only one it surprised.

The bubblegum bitch waitress took the menu back with a disgusted groan. "Ain't'cha gonna order someshit?"

I screwed up my face into what felt like a thoughtful pout.

"Nah," I said, "nothing here is really to my taste."

He laughed again, and I joined in, and by the time we stopped she had gone.

"Who _was_ that boysenberry slither creature?" I asked. "I mean, I could tell she was wearing a nametag, but full-frontal licking's not usually something I do on the first date."

"Meenah," Gamzee's tone was casual, like he could care less. "Think she's like Feferi's evil alternate timelinespawn or something."

I stared at where she'd been standing, reeling in shock. I seriously doubted anyone _that _bitchy could be related to tree-hugging Feferi.

"I am kinda thirsty, though," I murmured, swallowing a wave of nausea, stronger than the previous ones had been, threatening to overthrow me. I felt positively green.

Gamzee said quietly, "You don't look so good, sister."

I shut my eyes, as though it would make any sort of difference. "I'm fine."

I gripped the table's edge, the grey of my knuckles whitening. I could feel his stare, but I could spare no comments. If I opened my mouth even the barest inch, I feared, the contents of my churnsack would spew everywhere. Since I hadn't eaten anything all day, I just knew it would hurt like hell.

It wasn't long until I couldn't stand it any longer. I sucked in one last sticky, creamy breath and held it, clapping one claw over my protein chute and prey sniffer to help, and prepared to dash blindly—in every sense of the word—for the door. But before I could jump up, Gamzee pushed something into my other hand.

"Open it," he said, his voice urgent and unusual. So against my better judgment I released my held breath and drew another. I pushed through the diner's stench—stronger than ever—and made out the vague shape of him, stretched across the table, hand still poised toward me. And in my hand, a plastic bottle full of something an unnatural orangey pink.

"_Open_ it," he said, grabbing my other hand and curling it around the plastic cap. I did, and regretted it instantly.

The contents of the bottle fizzed up, spilling over my hand and across the table. It pooled and spread, dripping off the edge, spilling stickily into my lap.

And then the smell hit me.

Hard and acrid, it stung the back of my throat and smelled like rotting fruit. It was so strong and thick, I felt like I was going blind all over again just smelling it.

It was awful, but it was strong enough to block out most of the green and white rivers of scent the diner was giving off.

"Better?" he said, voice still soft and strange, and my "yes" came out breathier than I'd have liked. But at least I didn't have to hurl anymore.

"Thank you," I said, and took a drink without thinking.

It was disgusting. I only took one swallow, but the result was horrible and immediate. My cartilage nub felt like an ancient machine screaming and shuddering to a grinding halt, and my skin scales stood up as a shiver of pure ice swept all the way from the tips of my horns to the razor edges of my claws. I hissed as my lancinating phalanges and spinal crevices arched as one, my whole body reacting to less than one second of what felt like pure adrenaline. Then it was gone, leaving me only with sore joints and an icy headache between my auricular sponge clots.

I coughed, shoving the bottle away. My insides were like ice, my nose burning like fire.

"Sorry," Gamzee said, and I could hear a smile in his voice. Not the magnetic highblood one, but his signature clown one. The one so wide and fangy it looked like a mask. The _bastard_. "You weren't supposed to drink that one. Peach is kinda strong for beginners, especially warm."

I shot him a look, but forgot to add the venom when I realized I could _see _him—not as clearly as I would have with working sightspheres, but much clearer than usual.

Where before there had been only a dusty, chalky, smoky mass of what I knew was hair encircling his head, my nose now showed me the way it curled around his horns and ears and cheeks, the way it swirled and spiraled and shone in the dull light. I smelled the difference in fabric between the polo shirt and sweater he wore, the black and white polka dots of the shirt, the dusty black and indigo sweater, the Capricorn symbol hand-stitched into its front. And I could see his eyes, which was kind of a big deal since I hadn't seen eyes since my days of _actual_ seeing. Even the most forgiving of friends weren't usually down with having someone lick their eyes.

Gamzee's were wide and pale. I guess I would have expected them to be darker, like wine, but they were lavender, or paler. They were like the little star-shaped elderflowers that grew in clumps behind the school.

I stared at him, at his eyes, and wondered if anyone had ever told him they were beautiful. It was suddenly sort of important to me that he knew.

"Sis...?" Gamzee's tone was cautious, and I realized I was staring like a freshly hatched crawler. So I shut my eyes, which did nothing to effect how clearly I was seeing everything, but probably made me look less like a fool.

"Give me more," I said, and his surprised grin was infectious. From beneath the table he produced his school-smelling bag, which turned out to contain nothing but a colorful array of those plastic bottles.

My first question was, "Where's all your school stuff?" my second was, "Isn't that _heavy_?"

His fangs were like a soft butter cream as he bared them to me in response, handing over an unopened bottle as he did so.

I applied my tongue to the label. It read:

**Big 24 oz.**  
**Genuine**  
**Faygo**  
**Dee-licious**  
**Pineapple**

Though the yellows and greens of the plastic tasted much more like mango than pineapple.

I opened it, careful of the carbonation this time, and took a cautious (but not too) gulp.

BLUH! It was so sickly sweet, the artificial pineapple clung heavy to my tongue, like a live grub. Dee-licious my ass.

I shoved it back, and he gave me another without hesitation.

This one claimed to be Orange! flavored, but it was almost as bad as the pineapple. Then I tried "Moon Mist" (which tasted nothing whatsoever like that peppermint milk orb in Earth's orbit), Creme Soda! and Grape!

I was starting to notice that this "Faygo" brand seemed to have a particular affinity for exclaiming things.

"Don't you have anything _red_?" I asked, as none of the flavors so far had done much to impress.

He rolled his eyes and dug into his bag once more, and I was astounded at actually having _seen_ someone do it, for once, instead of having to listen for exasperation in their voice.

He handed over a Redpop! and it was just right. Not too heavy, not too sugary, just... red.

I grinned at him, thankful, and he responded with an expression I'd never seen before. One of confusion, maybe, or approval.

We sat there for a while, drinking and talking about anything we could think of. Our friends, our classes, our lives, our Lusii. It didn't seem like we were there for very long, but all at once, it seemed , the light slanting across our table had gone and the diner itself had gone from stuffy and hot to cool and quiet.

Then Mysterybitch Meenah the waitress returned. This time I was prepared, and could pick out similarities to Feferi. Her apron and bowtie matched Feferi's blood, and their horns seemed to be the same general shape. It was obvious to me now, too, that she was of seadweller descent.

"OK wrigglers," she said, voice snarky. "We're closing in thirty. So get out or get thrown out, ya dig?"

"Ya know what I _would_ 'dig'?" Gamzee said loftily. "You leaving us the motherfuck alone."

She smiled her shark smile and spoke through her teeth. "Look, you little saltstain, don't think I'm above culling a dirty little barnacle like you, even if you are an indigoblood. If I weren't on the clock, I'd stab holes in you _and _your little seafoam matesprit right now."

Gamzee growled at her then, a territorial snarl that _smelled_ angry. Her impatient frown turned to a challenging grin, and a long, sharp, double-ended trident dropped heavily from her captchalogue to her hand.

"Just try it, clownfish," she said, lowering herself into a fighting stance. But before Gamzee even had a chance to access his own weapon, a male shout cut through the tension, overruling even the intense strife music coming from the jukebox.

"MEENAH!"

It was the garlicky honey-carrot smoothied human from before, a bittersweet candy exterior that cut my mouth up with its scent. Incredibly enough, I could just make him out a few yards away, beside the soda counter. Behind it was Dirk, smelling like fresh fruit after a rain, like dirt and autumn and green, growing things. Like a fresh pumpkin pie, or a squash cut in half.

"What did I tell you about starting fights during hours?" the carrot human said. He was using that exact tone human mothers do on TV when their grubspawn track mud into the hive. House. Whatever.

Meenah hissed and him, gesturing angrily at Gamzee. "This little brinering snake-eyes octopus piece of indigo trash is asking for it!"

The human made an exasperated noise and gestured, but he was too far away for me to identify the movement.

"You hurt one more customer, Peixes, and you're fired."

She grumbled some more and threw her trident in his and Dirk's direction, captchaloguing it again before it could do any harm. She stalked away then, and both humans as well as the carrot human's voice followed, asking things like "Didn't Doc confiscate that thing after last time?" And "where do you pick up insults like that?"

When it seemed they had both gone, Gamzee shot me a scornful look.

"Would it be too much to ask for a little backup next time?"

I scowled back. "and get stabbed? What do you expect, a teal like me standing up to royal blood?"

"Well you could've tried to distract her, at least. Do that blind thing you do. That's _really_ distracting."

"Blind thing?" my face felt hot, my pulse pounded in my ears, streaking my vision with the color of my blood. "BLIND THING? You mean that thing I do where I'm BLIND?"

He shrugged, indifferent to my rage, and I ground my teeth so hard my fangs bit into my gums.

"I'd have to be _stupid_ to intervene in a highblood fight. Do you think I'm _stupid_, Gamzee?"

He let his incisors poke out at the corners of his mouth, a gesture that was at once dominant and mocking.

"I guess not," he shrugged. "But sometimes you make it awful motherfucking hard to tell."

"Oh, do I?" I made my face feel like a glare. He was blurring at the edges a little; though my head still throbbed and my tongue sat heavy with the syrupy flavor of that Faygo stuff, its effects on my sight seemed to be fading. "Maybe it's because I'm hanging out with _you_. I guess that's a pretty stupid thing for me to do."

His hand, again the foggy grey blob I was used to identifying as a hand, pointed over my shoulder. "There's the motherfucking door, sis."

I made to get up. "I _see_ it, idiot."

He laughed softly. "Really."

"Well I know where it is," I snapped, and we fell into a tense silence, within which the greasy egg butter stench of Doc's started to invade again.

"Hey," Gamzee said suddenly, softly. "Wanna have some fun?"

I gripped the empty bottle in front of me. "Like what?"

He slid his half-empty Redpop! across to me. "Like hiding out here until closing time. You know. Have some motherfucking fun."

I stared at the blurry plastic shape in my hands for a moment before taking a gulp. Again the hot buzz filled my cranial plates, radiating sweet red warmth through my body. Everything came sharply back into focus, too, and I drank it in, never wanting to lose this clarity again.

"Where could we hide?" I asked, warming to the idea.

He glanced around furtively, and I realized we were alone; all the customers had left, and none of the staff were in sight.

Scooping the remaining Faygo bottles back into his bag and leaving the empties on the table, Gamzee got up and slung the bag over his shoulder. Then he walked away, out of my range, so I got up, pulling my own book bag and soda with me, and followed.

I caught up to him by the jukebox, which was crackling and spitting while it switched to a new record. We passed that, and the arcade games, all of which were emitting soft snatches of music and ray gun noises, enticing and beckoning.

But Gamzee ignored them, leading me past the doors of the kitchen and a spiral staircase that smelled like my blood, all dark and iron. Only my blood tastes that way, though. Everyone else's just smells like fruit punch or melting cheese or something else equally delicious.

Finally we stopped before three doors spaced evenly against the back wall, just past the staircase. They each looked more or less the same, except for the one on the right, which had a glass panel set into it. All of them bore words, but I couldn't see them too clearly.

Gamzee disappeared inside the middle one without a word.

I stopped to smell the wood of the green-painted door, and run my tongue hesitantly over the word on its front. It was like licking pure salt. The word was HUMANS.

I cautiously pushed through the door, as well.


	3. Terezi (part two)

I'd never been in a human bathroom before.

It wasn't too extraordinary, other then the graffiti all over the walls. The tiles were dark green with white grout, all limes and peppers. The walls were milk and spinach pinstripes, and the whole place didn't actually smell too bad. All over everything, though, were scratches and drawings and words and numbers, written in all sizes, styles, and colors.

CALL 281-776-3226 FOR A GOOD TIME

I read, inked in bright red by the door.

There were also walls inside the room, freestanding white metal walls, cutting off part of the room and enclosing two small spaces in the corner, like stables. They enclosed and separated two porcelain sculptures. I recognized the bigger one from my Human Studies class—a "toilet". The other was smaller and oddly shaped, mounted on the wall and almost chairlike.

"What's this thing?" I asked. Gamzee had dropped his bag by the mirror, and was busily smearing some oily, greasy shit on his face.

"it's for the brothers," he said, glancing at me in the mirror. "I dunno. They use it for something the sisters can't do."

I stared at it in wonder, keeping my distance. Humans, in my opinion, could be pretty disgusting.

Grossed out by all the possibilities of the function of that thing, I joined Gamzee at the mirror.

Mirrors were strange things for me. Normal glass was like a wall that bounced colors and smells back at me from the reflections. But with mirrors, my nose couldn't tell the difference between a reflection and the real deal. Was I looking in a mirror, or was I staring at my double? Was Gamzee standing beside me, or in front of me?

I drained the bottle in my hand and looked again, and this time... Gamzee was definitely in front of me. He took the empty bottle from me and set it on the counter, then threaded his claws through mine. His grin was wider then ever, his posture more relaxed.

"Feel better?" I asked, ignoring the fact that we were holding hands and examining the paint job he'd slathered on. It smelled like gasoline.

"Like my motherfucking self," he said, with a tilt to his head and a lilt to his voice.

And then he kissed me, pressing me up against the cold, white-blood metal wall.

One second I smelled his eyes, dark with intent, the next I was tasting oily white and plum grey, then lips and teeth and tongue, then I stopped tasting flavors altogether and the world was just a swirl of black and white and grey and teal and indigo and then his tooth caught me, just hard enough to bruise, and I caught him back, and he growled from somewhere deep within his chest and he pulled me closer and farther and deeper and stronger until I pushed him away with a gasp for air, and colors and flavors and light and sound all rushed back to me at once.

"Are you crazy!?" I spat, darting away from his arms and backing towards the door. My mouth tasted like his, all sweetness and bubblegum.

He held some fingers up to his throat, as if checking for a pulse. After a moment he said, "don't think so."

"I'm with Karkat," I told him. "I'm dating _Karkat_." I held up the corner of the red varsity jacket I wore for proof: Karkat's name was clearly embroidered just below the pocket, and the back bore his last name, Vantas.

He nodded slowly, face serious, and for a moment I thought he was actually listening to me, for once. Then he said, "Haven't you ever heard of blackrom?"

My vision was fading fast; I edged around him and dove for his bag by the sink, uncapping and drinking heavily from the first bottle I met. Its label called it Rock & Rye! but my thinkpan instantly recognized it as the source of the sweet bubblegum on his breath.

Eau de Fucking Clown.

"Do you hate me, Gamzee?"

My question gave him pause, so I plunged on before he could say something dumb.

"I don't do meaningless quadrants. I know you do, and I know you've got hatesprits or whatever all over the place, but I only do quadrants that _mean_ something. OK?"

I expected him to back off, at least. But instead he tipped his head to the side, his mouth a neat little bow, and said "Just how many dates did you and he go on before you decided you were flushed?"

What kind of question was that!? We never _decided_ anything, we just _were_. I gave him a measured stare, making sure not to blink my useless eyes before answering. "Like twenty."

" 'K," he said, snagging his bag off the floor and pushing past me for the door. "Then just think of this as our first date. If it works out, fine, if not, fine."

Then he left, and, irritated, I followed.

.

He had stopped just outside, on the near side of the spiral staircase. He shooshed me when I came near, irritating me further, and peeked out at the main part of the diner.

I couldn't see anything past the nearest arcade games. I took a gulp of the Rock & Rye! I still held, but it didn't help much.

"What is it?" I hissed, hating that I had to ask.

"Meenah," he said, barely a breath, and held a finger to my lips.

"Sand-swallowing beach scum finally left," I heard, her voice crystal clear to my excellent ears.

"Oh, they're not _so_ bad," another voice said. It was female, but beyond that I couldn't tell much.

I yanked a lock of Gamzee's hair. "Who's that?"

"Pink sister," he said, pushing me away by the face. "Blonde. Human. Be quiet."

I would have shoved him back but he held me off, and his muscles were, for lack of a better word, fantastic. It sent a shiver down my spine just knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that he could best me in a fight.

I shook the thought off and focused on listening. No use thinking about things like that after the speech I just gave, even if it was mostly bicornbeast feces. I mean, sure, I was dating Karkat, and sure, I didn't have a lot of experience with fooling around, quadrant-wise. But mostly I'd wanted to see if denying Gamzee my spades could be the thing to finally make the clown's smile fade.

"...Left this shit all over the table. Ugh! Smells like hell," Meenah's voice was saying. The pure revolution in her voice was enough to vividly bring back the acrid taste of the peach Faygo she was no doubt referring to.

"Fucking kids come in here, make a mess, spill crap all over the fucking place," she went on. "Like they think this is their damn respiteblock or something."

"Kids these days," the pink human sighed. "Act like they were raised without moms."

"Some of them were, Roxy," another voice, male, said. This one I recognized: Dirk the soda jerk. His voice was a little muffled; he was probably behind his counter. I suddenly became aware of how likely one of the staff were to go into the kitchen, and how close Gamzee and I were to the doors. It didn't take a seeing-eye-barkbeast to realize we'd be caught if we hung around those stairs much longer.

"Were what?" pink human Roxy said.

"Raised without parents. Or whatever the Trolls call them. Lucious?"

The conversation was like a song, the squeaking of rags over Formica and shoes on tile providing the beat, the crackling of Daisy, Daisy from the jukebox adding subtle background sounds.

"They're called Lusii you triangle piece of pond scum," Meenah said. "Way to completely suck at diversity. Good luck whining to me next time you feel discriminated against, you brine-fed bucket sucker."

"Who?" Roxy asked, clearly not paying attention to the conversation. "Which ones were raised without parents?"

"You mean besides you and me?" Dirk said, his bored tone indicating this was not the first time they'd had this discussion. "Terezi."

I froze at the mention of my name, and I didn't hear Gamzee's next breath. We stood woodenly in the dark, neither one of us daring to make a sound as we listened to my story unfold.

"Terezi, that's the aquamarine one, right? With the glasses?" Roxy said. Her voice was nearer; evidently, she'd wandered closer to Dirk's counter to hear the story.

"Yeah. She was in here earlier, with Jade and them," Dirk said. "Dave told me... well, actually I read about it on his blog, since he never tells me shit. But anyway, Dave says her Lusus lives in an egg, and they only meet through dreams or something. But I think it died?"

"...Oh," Roxy said. Then, "That's awful!"

"It's common, is what it is," Meenah said, sounding defensive. "It's a Troll eat Lusus eat Lusus eat Troll world on Alternia. It's actually kind of rare for a Lusus to live even half the lifespan of its Troll."

"But its so sad," Roxy said. "Isn't she sad, living on her own like that?"

"Probably not," Dirk said. "I mean, just look at her. She doesn't look like she's sad, does she?"

"Well... Neither does Gamzee," she said, and beside me, I heard Gamzee stumble over breathing. I wanted to feel sorry for him, having to hear them talk about us both so carelessly, but Gamzee never talked about his home too much, and I was curious to hear.

"Who's Gamzee?" Dirk said. "I know the name..."

"The purple one?" Roxy prompted. "Likes polka dots?"

"It's _indigo,_ you useless bubblebulge Human," Meenah spat. "That wriggler I'm cleaning up after right now? Which, by the way, _someone _is supposed to be helping with!"

"Oh! Right," Roxy's voice was punctuated by the squeaking of sneakers on tile. "Anyway, I heard from Janey, who heard from John, who heard from Vriska, who heard from Tavros, who probably heard from Gamzee himself, that his Lusus is never home, and it just lives in the ocean and swims around, doing its thing, and Gamzee's basically had to raise himself, ever since he was old enough to walk."

"Trolls are _hatched _knowing how to walk, human scum," Meenah muttered.

I couldn't hear any more. The longer we listened, the sooner we were likely to be discovered. I tugged Gamzee's arm, but he was frozen stiff.

"Wait," Dirk said, sounding suddenly more alert than usual. "His Lusus... isn't it a giant sea goat? Since Capricorn is a goat, and he's practically a seadweller...?"

"Congratulations on the logic," Meenah grumbled. I was beginning to wonder how she had ever come to work at Doc's in the first place.

"Why do you ask, Dirkums?" Roxy asked, half-giggling his name.

"Nothing, it's just... Jake said he's been hearing more and more reports of a giant sea goat in the bay. Which doesn't make sense. How could a Lusus get to Earth? And if it's still alive, shouldn't it be taking care of Gamzee, or whoever its Troll is?"

"A question for the ages," Meenah said, dousing every syllable in sarcasm. "Jesus, they got it on the floor, too! Roxy, grab the mop, willya?"

"It's in the kitchen," Dirk said, and my lungbox filled with ice water. I grabbed Gamzee's horn-_that_ got his attention-and started up the spiral staircase as quietly as possible, dragging him behind me.

.

At the top was a very small landing and a nondescript white door. We darted through as fast as we could, then slammed it behind us, turning to press our ears to its wood surface for sounds from below, indicating we'd been seen.

We waited thus for several moments, but no one came to investigate. Once my cardiovascular system stopped beating doubletime, I took a look at where we were.

All I could smell was the dank moss flavor of darkness. I couldn't make out a thing, so I had to rely on touch.

"You ever been up here before?" Gamzee muttered, but I didn't bother answering. I drained the bottle of Rock & Rye!, then tossed it to him, though because it was so dark, or maybe just because it was Gamzee, it bounced off his head.

I put a claw to the nearest wall, on my left, and walked cautiously forward, careful to not let go of the wall, even for a second. Behind me, Gamzee made a lot more noise then necessary, doing whatever he was doing. Standing up or sitting down or whatever.

"Where the motherfuck are we?" he hissed, sounding annoyed. "Why is it so dark?"

I shrugged, just because he couldn't see it, and felt my face slip into a gloating smirk. It felt good to be the one in charge, the one to know the most, the one to lead the sightless. I silently thanked my Lusus for everything she ever taught me.

I came to a corner. On the wall beside it, there was a paper. I ran my tongue over it, letting the letters pop into my mind as I tasted them. It was a paper sign taped to the wall, with an arrow pointing back the way we'd come and the word "EXIT".

"Come on," I said, smelling for Gamzee. I could just make him out, still by the door, a patch of shadow a shade darker then the rest. "Follow my voice."

"No, wait," he said, a whisper.

I kept walking, feeling the corner and turning right. This fed into more hallway, it seemed, but this darkness was just a little bit lighter.

"There's a light up ahead," I said, walking forward a little faster, now. I smelled furnature polish and blood, and something else, something acrid. I guessed gunpowder.

The wall turned into a door, with a glass panel set into it. I toungued that, too, and found that it read A.D.

"What the hell is this place?" Gamzee asked, sounding, if I was not mistaken, just short of terrified.

"A murder scene," I whispered, sniffing along the line of the door. "There's fresh blood somewhere. Can't you smell it?"

"Not unless blood smells like Pine-Sol," he muttered.

I tried the door, and found that it opened quite easily. Inside was a stale-smelling office-type room with a lot of strange smells within. Gamzee, standing just behind me, make a shocked sort of sound, and I suspected it wasn't just the smells that were strange.

There was a man within, though my nose couldn't tell me if he was Human or Troll or Something Else. He was short and wide and wore a hat and a scowl.

"Madam Murel's girls, I presume?" he said, coming closer. His voice was as growly as he smelled, and I could feel his strange-smelling eyes on us both.

"Of course," I said.

He nodded. "Of course. So should I strip first?"

I choked back nervous laugh, and could have sworn I heard Gamzee do the same. After a moment I gathered myself enough to say, "um... yes, you will want to strip thoroughly before we provide our service."

He nodded sagely. "Okay, I'm stripping now..."

.

We clambered down the stairs, falling over ourselves in our haste to get away. I was wearing a suspiciously Dave-smelling pair of shades, which we had found on the face of a bust near the murder victim, and Gamzee was wearing a very long string of pearls, which we had stolen from the strange man. Neither of us could stop laughing.

"That was _insane_!" Gamzee said, as we collapsed into a pile at the bottom of the spiral staircase. "He actually thought we were..."

"Can you blame him?" I asked, or tried to; my sides were tearing apart at the seams. "You tied him to a CHAIR!"

"He asked me to," he protested, finding our bags where we had left them, at the foot of the stairs.

I admitted that the man had, indeed, asked Gamzee to do something with the rope. "But I don't think that was quite what he had in mind," I said.

"You're the one who broke his face statue," he said, passing me a bottle. I drank with reckless abandon, and it turned out to be Black Cherry. Not the best, but far from the worst (which I was sure would prove to be peach).

We looked around then, for the first time noticing that the lights were off down here, too, and all was quiet. Evidently, we had successfully passed the "stay until closing" phase of the plan.

We did everything we could think of. We took off our shoes and danced to the jukebox's sad song, we raided the kitchen and ate strange Human things like saurkraut and little packets of plastic cheese, and I found more of that red somethingnew, and took a bottle of it for myself. Then we played Spin the Faygo, except instead of kissing there was mostly hitting and telling jokes. We did each other's homework, and I braided some of his hair, and he tried on my glasses while I wore the shades and pearls.

Then, when we were tired and bored, we spread ourselves out on the floor, talking in the dark about whatever we thought of. I listened to him talk about his neighbors, how he sits awake sometimes and listens to them getting culled, and wonders if he will be next. Then I told him about living in a tree, what it's like to stay home sick and never hear any voice but your own. What it's like to sometimes hear your toys talking to you, and what it's like when the things they say terrify you.

Then we got up and we danced. We danced for a while, sometimes slow and sometimes fast, sometimes jokingly and sometimes dead serious. Then I started feeling dizzy, so we sat at Dirk's counter and shared a Moon Mist. The jukebox sang a song that reminded me of Karkat, and I hummed along.

After a while of just sitting in silence, Gamzee said, "It's not like he _never_ comes home. I mean, sometimes he just gets busy. You know. Family, and all that."

I nodded, even though I didn't know. This seemed strange, coming from the devil-may-care indigoblood. He was laying out his weakness for me to inspect in the moonlight, almost as though he trusted me, which of course he couldn't have, because in my opinion, as well as the general unspoken laws of Troll culture, that would be a very bad idea.

"One time," he continued, "he was there for some of second autumn, and he showed me some fight moves. Then he ate some of my neighbors. I think he was trying to protect me from them or something, but it just made me all the more scared they'd cull me, next. You know?"

I didn't know about that, either. "My Lusus talks to me in my dreams," I said, though he probably already knew that. "She showed me how to smell and taste colors, so I wouldn't be helpless. So I could still have a chance, I guess." But that was pretty much the only useful thing she ever did for me. All her other lessons were things like "look both ways before crossing a highblood" and "don't eat anything that's been dead for more than a week" and "never help anyone unless it benefits you" and "fill every quadrant as fast as you can so you always have one to fall back on". All things most Trolls usually figure out pretty quickly by the time they pupate.

I felt uneasy, like something bad was going to come of this conversation. As a tealblood, I had always known better than to expose any weaknesses to anyone higher or equal to me, and as a result everyone seemed to think I was made of stone, like I didn't have feelings. But no one, not even my dreaming custodian, had told me what to do if a highblood chose to trust me with his weakness.

"I'm just glad he's fine out there," he said, softly. "Not starving or whatever."

And then he leaned towards me, and his face, in the pale slice of moonlight, smelled as bubbly as the Moon Mist did, like clear, sparkling newness. And his kiss, a memory of the one in the bathroom, with no trace of the harshness from before, was like a whisper in a language no Human school could ever teach. We kissed, and in that moment, I didn't think about Karkat at all.

.

We laid out on the floor again, and the clock on the wall said it was somewhere around Human midnight. On Alternia, most Trolls would be just settling into their recooperacoons, if their custodians were strict enough to enforce regular sleeping habits. Most of the Trolls I knew would still be up, trolling one another in avoidance of sleep, or roleplaying with their stuffed animals to drown out the voices of their fears. At least, that's what I would have been doing, had I been home.

As it was, I was laying on the weirdly comfortable floor, feeling the muted green and white tiles beneath my fingertips, and thinking about quadrants. I was starting to think I'd misjudged him, that he wasn't as horrible as I originally thought. I was wondering if I should recede my original statements from the bathroom, and propose something a shade more red than the original caliginous proposition.

Just as I opened my mouth, however, there was a sound from somewhere outside. A clicking step, perhaps, or a crunching gait. Gamzee sat up suddenly from where he was lying beside me, pupils dilated, movements swift, mouth open to draw scented air over his windhole.

I tried too, but I couldn't smell anything new, othe than his adrenaline.

The limeblood in me wanted to hide from the unknown danger, but hiding would make me seem weak to Gamzee, who would then take the opportunity to kill me. So, against all my primary instincts, I gathered myself up into a crouch behind him, and, as he turned his head to catch some sound, I pounced.

I hardly knew what was happening; all my killing instincts were dominating my movements, my thoughts, every action. I could smell his fruit punch blood, and I heard a roar that could have been me or it could have been him or it could have been the blood rushing in my noisetunnels. He slammed me to the ground, driving breath from my lungs, but I clawed my way back up, careful of his horns while trying to gouge him with my own. He bit my arm and I bit his leg and we shrieked and howled and spat and the only way to accurately describe it in Human terms would be to liken it to whisker creatures pailing. Sans the pails.

He managed to pin me, legs heavy on my hips, claws bleeding cages around my bleeding wrists, though I writhed and struggled with all my might.

I hissed at him, spitting and bleeding angrily, and he roared back, his snarl loud and bloody and dangerous and raw. My blood had never felt so green.

I managed to heave myself up and spear him with my horn. I wriggled free, then, as he recoiled in pain, and I ran, scrambling and sliding in my sock feet, to hide behind the soda counter. Peering out, I thought I saw the gleam of his eyes through the dark.

I shoved myself back, pressing my back into the shelves below, doing my best to breathe silently, to keep my skirts from rustling. I was about to pee myself I was so scared, a fear that only intensified when, through the darkness, I heard his breathing, a slow, ragged sound.

_Note to self, _I thought, as shivers danced along my spine, _look both ways before crossing a highblood._

There was silence, and a warm trickle of blood slid down my cheek. Then the quiet darkness of the diner was split by the white-hot sound of shattering glass. The next second I saw him-illuminated in a freeze-frame moment, my vision enhanced dramatically for a second by sheer terror-hurtling over the counter towards me, hands outstretched, face hidden in a tangle of dark hair, every incredible muscle in his body perfectly arranged in preparation of his landing. I drew out my claws, bracing myself to tear his flesh, but too soon he was on me, his breath, reeking of plum blood, hot on my cheek.

His hand clamped tight over my mouth, tasting like his blood and my blood and his rage and my fear.

I opened my mouth, fangs protruding, ready to bite, but his voice hissed in my ear, "someone's here," and our mutual fear mixed, sharp and bitter, in the blood-smelling air.

I took a moment to control my instincts, to hide my claws in my fists and seal my lips over my fangs. Everything smelled too bright, and the moment I stopped thinking of killing, all I could think of was hurting. There was blood on my hands and in my mouth and staining my clothes, and most of it was mine.

"Did you hear that?" we heard, from somewhere directly outside. "_Shit._ Did you _hear _that, Crowbar?"

"Just some cats makin' it," said another voice. this one sounded much angrier. "Come _on._"

"But it sounded like it was comin' from inside..."

"Oh, you're turning chicken _now?_ All those places, and you're turning on me _now?_ God _damn _it, Eggs!"

"Look, I know this isn't anything to you, breakin' into all these places, 'ooh, who could it be?' but if we get caught..."

"It's not just that," the voice grumbled. "You're saying we should call it quits?"

"Maybe just not this one... place gives me the creeps."

"Yeah, me too."

"Okay then. Let's go."

And then they left.

Gamzee and I both heaved sighs of relief, and he gallantly removed his hand from my face. Then we laughed, and then he kissed me, and I bit him, and we fought again, but this time with a little less bloodshed. Then we curled up right there on the floor, behind the soda counter, and fell asleep, though I was longing for the warm comfort of my 'coon's slime. We woke just as the Human sun was coming up over the Human horizon, spilling through the large window, and I reflexively recoiled. But I reminded myself, as I did almost every day, that the Human sun wouldn't hurt me.

Then, as the slimy rotten-egg smell of Doc's came back with the light, we found a back door, through a green apartment draped with green velvet. I felt watched, there, and the air smelled suspiciously like licorice, but nothing went awry. We found the door and slipped into the early-morning chill in the alleyway outside.

We figured what Karkat didn't know wouldn't hurt him.


	4. Vriska

It wasn't really _my _fault, what happened. I mean, it was _someone's _fault, but certainly not _mine._

Maybe it was Terezi's, who sat across from me the whole time and watched it happen, eyes bulging behind her stupid cat-eye glasses, hands shaking as the drank from that increasingly suspicious flask she'd started carrying around.

Or perhaps it was Eridan's, sitting behind Terezi, purple spitcurl in his eyes, striped sweater sleeves knotted around his shoulders, hands clutching a soda cup like his stupid soc life depended on it, watching the whole thing unfold like it was a play put on just for him.

It could have been John's Lusus' fault, the tall man who casually reached over, pale and clawless fingers reaching for Eridan's popped collar, casually folding it down like countless others before him had done.

Cartainly it was the fault of the guy, the Human, the false waitress whose nametag read Andrew, who wore black and white like a Human maid in one of those horrible Human movies. His Human-colored hair with his Human-colored skin and his Human wants and needs and desires, his Human trust and his Human anger and his Human inability to grasp exactly how Trolls go about relationships.

It was the fault of the awful flowers he gave me, in a boquet the size of a small meteor, with a card that said _to missss sssspinneret_. The terrible flowers, lilies and carnations and roses and tiny bunches of white things, too small and bunchy to be real flowers. The way they made Terezi sneeze into her fries, swimming in ketchup, and the waxy petals and wide, flat leaves made my claws feel gross, like there was an invisible residue.

When the guy-Andrew-started singing, that was the true trouble. It was the fault of his song, which was very long and consisted of dozens of Human words I didn't know, words like _swashbuckle _and _elope _and _burgeois_ and_ meta_. It made me yawn, made me sleepy, made me doze off once or twice, made Terezi kick me under the table to pay attenton, made Eridan look up from his eighth or twentieth soda, made the tall man hold his pipe in a more attentive manner, made me ponder the length of the average Human song. Made me realize how many words rhymed with _eight_ and _risk _and _blue._

It was the fault of the fork, the one Terezi slipped off the table with her elbow while aiming to kick me more effectively. It slipped, and Andrew picked it up, and he was wearing little lace things under his waitress skirt, and I found I had it in me to be offended. I found I had it in me to be a lot of things at that moment, least of all horrified that the entiety of my chumproll had to be there to witness the strange display of the strange little man. Glad they were there to witness me being both lusted after and triamphant, to see me bring the man to his knees, there in his place of work, and from there he had a lovely view of me as I left, and with little intent to ever return to that little green and white eatery.

It was Terezi's fault I was mad, of course. After, she said, she laughed so hard she got a snoutbleed, and the whole place burst into applause. Andrew was quite unflustered by my departure, I was unhappy to hear, even if he had to spend a few minutes on his knees, where I'd left him. Even if he did smell like salty tears and bitter dissappointment to my keen-nosed teal teammate. Even if her breath did smell suspiciously of black cherry syrup and processed liquid sugar. Even if she was wiping teal blood from her face as she told me, and she had bruises on her arms and a black eye that was more green and yellow than black. Even if her smile was a bit more stoned than usual. Even if she avoided all of my meddling questions.

The day I went to Doc's was both the first and the last, and I hoped Andrew was happy.


	5. Jane

[REFERENCE GUIDE]

Ms. Paint - world renowned investigator hercule poirot  
Jane - international inspector jaques closeau  
Dirk - esteemed robotiks engineer olivier charpuntier  
Roxy - masterette spellcastress emolieir lecrepe  
Jake - explorer extrodinaire kiquesand preime

.

Doc's was unusually busy that afternoon. Suspiciously busy, I thought, but I didn't share my views with anyone. No one, that is, save for my mute partner in inspection, the world-renowned Investigator Hercule Poirot.

We had, Mr. Poirot and I, been investigating the uncanny event in our undercover civilian disguises. I, Inspector Jaques Closeau, was posing as an unassuming young diner chef, under the alias of a girl named Jane. Mr. Poirot, meanwhile, was cleverly disguised as a harmless lady as well, albeit one with an exoskeleton. His persona was named Ms. Paint, a name almost ingeniously simple with a temperament to match.

It seemed uncanny that the diner should be so crowded this specific day, at this specific time, of all the days and of all the times it could have been busy instead. I was hot on the trail of clues as to why that might be, or, at least, I would have been, were it not for the fact that my civilian cover, young miss Crocker, was hard at work, since she was the head chef at the diner that was currently and suspiciously busy. It was hot in the diner's kitchen, and were I not so preoccupied with the mystery of the afternoon crowd, I might have thought the heat was suspicious, too.

Young, sweet, harmless miss Crocker was busy pulling a freshly baked apple pie from the industrial-sized oven when my dear friend and longtime accomplice in detecting, the Masterette Spellcastress Emolieir Lecrepe, appeared in the window, through which miss Crocker could receive orders to fill. Madame Lecrepe, too, was undercover, posing as young Roxy Lalonde, a mild-mannered deception of her true and magical self.

Miss Lalonde passed an order to miss Crocker, which read _vanilla shake, apple pie a la mode_ in pink, glittery, curly handwriting only Madame Lecrepe was capable of producing, and only I, Mr. Closeau, was capable of deciphering.

"Can you slip some ice cream on that pie?" She asked, which of course was code for 'the treasure is in the trap', which was, of course, code for 'explorer extrodinaire Kiquesand Preime is in the diner'. "It's for Rose, she's wearing a _sweater, _and in _this _heat!"

"Of course, of course," said mild-mannered miss Crocker. Sir Preime, or Jake English, was also the target of my investigations, but he was in on them, as well. It was all part of my ingenious plan. Glancing at the time-sensitive material in the corner of the kitchen, I said, "Is John here yet? I have something for him, if you could send him back when you see him?"

John was one of my many civilian connections. I had trusted him with the details of this particular mystery because in many ways we were similar, and I would need to be in two places at once to pull off the sort of investigative work this case would require.

Lecrepe leaned into the window, peering at me. "What's going on, J?" she asked. "Something up in ye olde Crockerland?"

I had not entrusted the case to my dear Spellcastress. At least, not yet. She was a good detective, but could be easily swayed. I couldn't risk the goons behind this case getting anything out of her until I had collected enough evidence. Thinking quickly, I diverted her attention.

"John's no Crocker," I sighed, turning away. "He doesn't even like cake."

Madame Lecrepe shrugged, and I knew I had been successful.

"Anyone else you want me to keep an eye out for, wink wink?" She giggled, leaning in even further. This was something she liked to do, try to get sensitive information out of me by flustering me with trivial talk of boys. Of course, the masterful Inspector Jaques Closeau was immune to such girlishness. Besides, I had no intentions of telling her who, exactly, I had been keeping my eye, private as it was, on, of late.

"Not unless you see a knight on a white horse," I said, very much doubting she would. Of course, there was always the chance. I did love a good cliche. She left then, with a few more knowing winks, and I sighed, turning to miss Crocker's cooling pie. Luckily for me, the Spellcastress was nowhere near the detective I was.

Madame Lecrepe wasn't the only one miss Crocker could receive order slips from. There were other employees at the diner, too, who kept her plenty busy. There was also Andrew, a man who made my skin crawl on occasion, Aranea, a lovely Troll lady who was rather more bearable when her mouth was shut, and, of course, another of my trusty friends, the esteemed Robotiks Engineer Olivier Charpuntier, otherwise known as Dirk Strider. He manned the soda counter out front, and sometimes passed along orders, as well.

Mr. Charpuntier, along with Madame Lecrepe, was not to know of my investigation, for it was he himself I was looking into. I had found out, barely a fortnight ago, that a certain bill of rights had passed, and there were some connections it held with my dear Engineer. I had decided to plan a surprise investigation (codename: "party") for him that very day, whereupon I could question him about the contents of the bill. Madame Lecrepe, who was usually somewhere in his vicinity, could not be trusted to keep her peace, and had been thusly expelled from the investigations. I was sure she would understand.

It was then, as I received back the pie _a la mode _and the shake from Mr. Charpuntier, that John walked into the kitchen, ever brisk and happy to help. Could a Human alive not like that in a person? I doubted it; though we weren't strictly related, I had found, more often than not, that my affections for him were quite maternal, or something rather like it. Sisterly? I hadn't yet found the time to investigate this far within myself.

"Hey, Jane!" he said, all smiles, as usual. "Guess what! I finally got Karkat to agree to let me show him all my favorite movies! I had to promise to watch his favorites next weekend, but this weekend he's all mine! And if I know him, he'll love my movies, which means I'll probably love his! Wow, this melding of the races thing is the best, isn't it?"

I smiled at him, used to his aimless chatter. I was also used to enduring burns of varying severity with a smile, which I was doing with ease as he talked. I had just burned my wrist on the edge of the stove for about the hundredth time.

Dousing my wrist with cold water in the sink and activating my civilian cover, I said, "What'll you show him first? Ghostbusters?"

"Yeah! Maybe," he said, beaming with excitement. "That, or maybe Hook? Or Ghost Dad? I think he would _love _Ghostbusters, though! I mean, it's got all the best things: ghosts, slime, marshmallow men, _Slimer_? Oh, he's awesome, and, you know, there's plenty of romance in there, too, so I'm sure he'll like it."

"I sure did," miss Crocker said, as I fished an ice pack out of the freezer. "I like Egon the best; he's so cute. I love his glasses, and his little hair, and how he's always so serious about everything, and how girls make him kind of nervous? Adorable!"

John laughed, making choking motions. "Gag me," he said. "So how about that party?"

Eyes widened, I made shushing motions, pointing towards Dirk's window. "You mean the _investigation,_" I said. Since Mr. Charpuniter wasn't in on the ruse, he would, understandably, assume any talk of a "party" meant we were actually planning such an event.

"Right, the _investigation_," John nodded. "I forgot, you're being all, _'doodly doo! I'm an elderly British man!' _about this, aren't you? Well, how are we going to, um, set up for the _investigation_ while the diner is open?"

"We're not," I said. "It's just getting too _crowded _in here. I need you to _dust for fingerprints or something _upstairs for me." This of course meant he should be moving the time-sensitive material, the documents and caution tape and all that, upstairs, where no one could confuse bubble pipes for party hats. "And I'm _not _'elderly', I'm distinguished. And the names are _clearly_ French."

"Yeah, yeah. 'Elderly', 'distinguished', same difference. You said upstairs?" he squinted at me. "Is that code too, or...?"

"No, I mean actually upstairs. I already asked Doc to talk to the tenants, and there's plenty of room for the stuff if you just leave it in the hallway by the door. That way it will be _out of the way _and _no one will mess with it_."

"Riiiiiiiight," he winked, gathering up as much of the decorations-I mean, _top-secret files_-as his arms could hold. "Hey, we should-"

"Fill a bucket with confetti and prop it up over a door? Way ahead of you," I said, giving in to my inner prank master and pointing to where I already had one prepared and stored under the dishwasher. "We'd better keep that one in here, though. You know how those Trolls can be."

"If I had a boonbuck for every time I had to sacrifice a perfect opportunity for a joke just to respect some Troll's culture..." he said, trailing off ominously as he exited the kitchen.

I shook my head. What an excitable guy. Sometimes I wondered how he had so many friends, being so hyper all the time. Whatever. I, Inspecter Jaques Closeau, had bigger irons in the fire.

Speaking of fire, I turned around just in time to see Mr. Poirot waving frantically at a pan on the stove, leaping with flames. It looked like he was trying to fan it out with his hands.

Leaping into action, I clamped a lid over the whole pan, as Mr. Charpuntier had taught me just days ago. I was in the middle of explaining to Mr. Poirot how to deal with grease fires when I tuned my detective ears to the snatches of conversation that could be heard through the window located just behind Mr. Charpuntier's counter. I had learned many a secret by my simple eavesdropping trick, as I did then, when I leaned in to discern what could be the cause of two male voices, raised in passion, catching my attention. I let Poirot handle the other orders in the meantime; he was an ideal assistant for such times.

I peered through the counter window to see what all the commotion was about, and saw young Dave Strider up at the counter, his mouth a firm, angry line. Mr. Charpuntier stood before him, partially blocking my view, his shoulders set in an angry, tense position.

"Come on! Why can't you do this one thing for me, it's not like it's any different from what you do every single day," Dave was saying. He held something clenched in his fist, I noticed curiously. "You won't even have to take off that stupid bow tie."

"Hell no," Mr. Charpuntier said. "If you think for one moment that I'm going to do anything for your sorry ass, you'd better think again. I'm not going to help you do anything except your homework, so I suggest you sit back down and focus on your date."

"But-" Dave began, clearly glaring.

"But?" Charpuntier prompted.

"But that's not fair! She's not your girlfriend, is she? That makes her fair game, right?"

"_Wrong,_" the robotics master said, bristling. "Jane isn't just some toy for you to play with, like you do all those Trolls. _And _John. _And _Jade. _And... _I don't even care who else. Just not Jane. _Not. Jane_."

"Sure thing, Mr. Crocker," Dave glowered, and I could see the tension rise in Mr. Charpuntier's shoulders.

Then Madame Lecrepe appeared like Wonder Woman, with a whoosh and a bang and a flourish. "Hey, Dirkums! Hiya, Dave!"

I withdrew from my eavesdropping, having heard enough. So Dave was into me, huh? _Hmmmmm. _I, Inspector Jaques Closeau, was intrigued. Dave had sort of created a reputation for himself, one that involved what the Trolls usually referred to as "pailing". I wasn't too clear on what that was, exactly, but any gumshoe worth his salt could tell you that meant Troll sex. I decided then, as I stood in the kitchen with frosting in my hair (I only just noticed it then), I wouldn't write the youngest Strider off just yet, but I wouldn't make it easy for him, either. This had, indeed, proven to be a very interesting day, and it was barely getting started, as far as my investigations were concerned.


	6. John

It was hot. Really, really hot. So hot that the walk from the kitchen to the upstairs door of Doc's, just a few yards, felt like miles once I was weighed down with so many decorations for Mr. Strider's surprise party. By the time I was halfway up the spiral staircase, I was wishing the game my friends and I had started playing recently, SBURB, was a real thing instead of just a dumb roleplay game. Then, at least, I could use my newfound powers as Heir of Breath to cool myself down. As it was, I had trouble turning the knob of the door at the top, because my hands were all gross and sweaty.

I blamed puberty, more than anything.

I dumped the boxes of stuff right by the door and leaped back down, excited to meet up with some of my friends who were at the diner. Dad was there, too, of course, but mostly we'd asked him to help because of his overwhelming Tallness Attribute. Seriously, the man was tall. I doubted my genes sometimes, when I compared our heights. Then, of course, Jane wasn't much taller than me. Maybe I should bring that particular mystery up with her, I thought as I surveyed the diner. _So many Trolls!_ Of course, she would probably ruin it with her weird detective fetish.

Rose was there, deep in conversation with the lovely-yet-scary Kanaya. They were surrounded by so many books, it was like a scene out of _10 Things I Hate About You, _or something. I decided to join my good pal Karkat instead; I didn't want to get sucked into one of Rose's monologues about mental hygene or whatever.

As it turned out, though, Karkat was with his girlfriend, Terezi. They were sharing like seven thousand french fries, though I use the term "sharing" very loosely, because it looked to me that Karkat was eating all the fries and Terezi was just eating the ketchup.

"Hey, guys!" I said, approaching them with the expectation they would be happy to see me. I was wrong, it turned out.

"Oh, hey, John," Karkat said, as I pulled up a chair from another table. "Do you think you could, possibly, oh, I don't know, maybe go bother some _other _really busy 'chums' of yours, instead of soaking our collective fatigue boxes with your incessant inexpletives?"

"Like that's a word," I snorted, noticing Terezi's unusual green hue. "Terezi, you alright?"

"Fine," she hissed, like a snake giving birth to scorpions. "I'm frantically clawing my uncooperative prey-lookers with delight at seeing you, John. Haha. 'Seeing'. I'm fucking fine, why does everybody keep asking me that?"

Her words were as harsh as the relentless heat_. _"Jeez, sorry. You just looked a little... teal in the face, there."

"That's what _I've _been saying," Karkat said, eyeing me imploringly. "You'd think, wouldn't you, that forceful expulsions of one's churnsack into the local flora would cause one to admit, _finally, _that something is wrong, especially to one's _matesprit, _but _oh, no, _she's _fine."_

"You puked in the bushes?" I asked, incredulous both at the situation and at the fact that a year ago I would have had no idea what Karkat had just said. "Terezi, maybe you should see a doctor or something..."

"Do you want to go complete forensic tests on the stuff yourself?" she growled, digging into her shoulder bag and pulling out a silver flask. "There aren't any Troll doctors, goofus, because no Troll would be stupid enough to give another Troll a knife and expect to keep the not-terrible-smelling aroma that comes hand-in-hand with being alive. Besides," she took a drink, then shivered, grimacing. "I've got it under control."

Karkat rolled his eyes, turning to me. "She's impossible! But," he squinted suspiciously at me, "not as impossible as I'm sure _you're _going to be, on Saturday."

"Oh, my dear, doubting Thomas," I said, clapping him endearingly on the shoulder. "It's going to be awesome! I can't wait, personally."

"Wait," Terezi said, sniffing towards me. "What's on Saturday? Who's Thomas? Are you cheating on me, Karkles!?"

"Of _course _not," he spat. "Jegus, Terezi, calm your rumble spheres. The Human and I have plans to exchange some of the finer points of our cultures, that's all. He's going to make me watch some Human movies, and i'm sure they're going to be _loathsome._"

"Loathsome!? I _beg _your pardon, Mr. Vantas, but it is _your _movies which, I'm certain, will prove to be _detestable,_" I said, in the most offended, snooty, and British accent I could muster.

"What are you doing with your voice," Terezi said, pointing to my right. "Stop that."

I did stop, but only because I was bumped into pretty hard from behind just then by someone who turned out to be a tallish guy in a black and white waitress uniform.

"Oh, hey," he said, sounding sort of nervous and trembly. He was acting weird, too, what with the way he was glancing everywhere twice.

"We've already got a waitress, Mr. cheese bread," Terezi said, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead like she had a headache or something.

"Oh, right. Of course, sorry about that, John," the guy said. His nametag said ANDREW, but he didn't really look like an "Andrew" to me. He sort of had one of those faces.

"Uh, yeah. I don't know you," I said.

"Right." He crossed his arms, shoulders hunched, and glanced over his shoulder. "Sorry, random diner patron I don't know anything about. Don't mind me. Please, go back to discussing Terezi's new hobby. I mean. Shit."

He wandered off then, looking lost and a little scared.

"Goddamn time travelers," Karkat spat. "It's not like we're having a bitch enough of a time just dealing with this hideous clusterfuck of a racial orgy, wading through the endless incestsludge everyone keeps spewing every time they look at each other, now we have to deal with this sort of semipotent bullshit as well, like for some reason everyone on both our planets just threw up our hands all at the same time like a fucking rave, or wave, shit, I forget which one. Which is it when everyone throws their various limbs in the air with no regard to how completely idiotic they look, usually due to some favorable outcome or a command from an unknown entity?"

"Could be either," I said, helping myself to their fries. "I think you mean a wave, though. Are you thinking sporting events or strobe lights?"

"I don't even care anymore," he said. "Why does your stupid Human planet have such unbearably shitty weather, by the way? I can feel my snort barrels catching fire."

"So you two are both going to be busy on Saturday?" Terezi asked, holding the presumably cool side of her flask to her forehead. "And just what am I supposed to do while you two revel in your respective complimentary juices?"

"Well, I would say you could come with, but we agreed not to watch any Alternian films until next weekend, so obviously joining us this week will just be a massive shitheap waste of time," Karkat said.

"But you can come, if you want," I said. "First we're going to watch Ghostbusters one and two, and then maybe Raising Arizona. That one is from pretty early in Nick Cage's career, back before he brushed his hair as much. Way before Con-Air, probably. I already got Vriska to watch that one and she really liked it, so maybe you will too? You guys hang out a lot, right?"

She grinned and drank more from her flask. "Sure," she said, sounding pretty insincere. "We hang out just about as much as Pyralspite and I do. Which is plenty, thanks for your concern," she added, probably realizing neither of her gentlemanly companions knew who Pyralspite was. "Anyway, I'm actually not interested in joining you two; I think I'll have my shamecrushers full that day."

Karkat stared at her for a moment, then shrugged. "Whatever, your gain, I guess. Whatever this 'Raising Arizona' bullshit is about, I'm probably going to regret ever agreeing to watch it once I have. If the title is anything to judge by, as it usually is on Alternia, it's going to be about something distasteful and Human and ultimately disgusting and anatomy-related."

I shrugged. "Not really. It's about two criminals who steal a baby."

I didn't see Dave coming, but Terezi did. I noticed her raise her head in the direction of the soda counter and, following her gaze (i guess), saw Dave walking slightly less stoically than usual towards the door.

I jumped up to intercept him, following him outside, where it was, impossibly, even hotter. "Hey, Dave!"

"'Sup," he said, like he wasn't upset at all. I would have been fooled if I hadn't known him for as long as I could remember.

"Hey," I said, "So, Jane is throwing a party for Mr. Stri... I mean, Dirk, today after the diner closes, for his robots, and that bill thing that passed. She said I could bring a friend, so do you think you could come?"

He cocked his head, more like twitched it, really, like there was an annoying fly or something. "Yeah, I don't really think I'll be making much of an effort to show up to something like that, sorry. You know, us stoic guys have got an image to uphold, and all that nonsense. You wouldn't understand, being the all-around likable guy you always manage to be."

"Are you sure?" I was getting a feeling in my stomach, like there was something going on beneath it all, something I didn't quite understand. To be fair, I got that feeling a lot. "I don't have anyone else to ask, you know, because everyone has a girlfriend or a hate date or something and I don't really want to be the only one I can talk to there..."

His mouth did a thing, like one half of it got chopped off. "Yeah. Sorry. Maybe next time. You know, I just have way too many irons in the fire, etcetera, etcetera, for those metal assholes. Anyway, I'm gonna go make out with a Troll or something, I don't even know. Catch you later, okay?"

Then he fistbumped me and left, and the pit in my stomach growled with helpless confusion. It was like everyone around me was having a life and I was trapped in an endless loop of heroic stupidity.

I shrugged and headed back inside.

.

It was boring hanging out at the diner with no friends to talk to. Karkat had shooed me off upon my re-entry, saying we would have enough time to make useless niceties on Saturday, so could I pretty fucking please give a guy and his matesprit some space. Rose and her ladyfriend Kanaya were deep in conversation that included paging through massive volumes of dusty texts and really big words and completely unironic utterings of the phrase "your mom", and to be honest they were kind of weirding me out. Jade and Tavros and Nepeta were there, huddled over manuals and character sheets and stuff, and Eridan was there, too, guzzling soda after soda and looking sort of lost.

As the afternoon wore on, and the diner became less and less crowded, I watched the way people behaved around each other, and around themselves. Earlier, when I had been chatting with Karkat, Terezi had been hostile and grumpy. It seemed suspicious to me when, an hour later, he left and she stayed, and her whole demeanor became more relaxed. Fifteen minutes later, she was gone. I didn't see her leave, but her bag was still there, by the table, so I suspected she hadn't gone far.

Eridan never moved from his lonely booth, except to order more and more soda. He never once got up to pee, though, which I thought was pretty awe-inspiring, considering the mountain of paper cups he was accumulating.

Then there were the evening-shifters. For some reason, even though the diner closed at around ten, there was a whole set of employees that came in once the sun began to set. There was Rufioh, who had to work late because his incredible horns and wings were too much for a crowded diner. There was Meenah, who had been demoted to janitorial staff the day after there had been a break-in at the diner. Though the broken window had been replaced with no fuss, everyone was pretty sure she had been demoted as a direct result of whatever had happened that night. Then, of course, there was Calliope, one of my favorite waitresses who always had a fond smile for everyone, and managed to pull off her grey skin and white hair incredibly well, I thought.

Calliope wasn't there that day, however. Jane said she was sick, and hadn't been in for a few days. I chose to believe her.

I thought my wait for the party would be boring as hell, but I was proven wrong soon enough, when a certain blueblood Troll strode through the door like she owned the place and stared everyone down as she took a look around. Vriska was wearing her usual too-cool-for-school look, shoulder-exposing short sleeves and hot pants that made the Rocketts look like trick-or-treaters.

Terezi came from the bathrooms just then, and her hair was a mess. She was putting on her glasses as she greeted Vriska, one of the most feared-yet-admired girls in school. Neither Troll looked my way, and I was okay with that.

Things got interesting when, after she and Terezi had migrated to a booth, Andrew, the same weird guy from before, presented her with an enormous bouquet of flowers. She wrinkled her nose at them, and Terezi sneezed again and again.

"O, that a spider's silk would thus ensconce my longing heart," Andrew said loudly, causing everyone to look their way. "How I bemoan the fates and curse ye the heavens that would thrust me thusly upon this Earth with no one to accompany, such as did Adam ad Eve, and to have similarly granted this fate unto you, a Troll as crafty as the spider to which she bears so many likenses, but that we must be apart, separated by many a barrier as love will be separated, but like the mighty Romeo I will not be deterred, sayeth I, with love's light wings shall I o'erpearch this barrier, nay, how could such a fate befall me, the god of all I survey, for this, dear princess, is my proclamation of not only love, but of war on all who may be but want to keep my fair dears apart, who would, with mine own hand, force things such as ectobiology into the already unmitigated mix, to crush my own dreams, this, I say, is their punishment, for I will not be had; nay, I indeed declare I cannot be kept from those I desire to be placed with one upon another, sayeth I, for this they will die, for this, _all _my creations will find their fates!"

The diner was silent, except for Terezi who was making a sort of half-snorting, half-choking sound. Then the jukebox kicked in, playing Xrom, and everyone returned to their own businesses, but a lot more quietly.

"Excuse me?" Vriska said, in a way that made her sound severely inconvenienced by his weird poem thing.

"She speaks," he said with a sigh. "O, speak again, bright angel, of lacy-bosom'd clouds in the perilous light, how upon your visage I could preform to the utmost examples of how a sight tragically lost to the confines of the harshest of the stars can be rewon again by those what octiple orbs, would'st yet they gaze with love or such, whichever that can be expressed through the symbol of which resembles most closely the intimates of an anatomy, which can be found high and away in the cavernous chest, hidden as can be our love no more! Oh, to hear you say you love me, how I could rest forwith the hapless self-awareness that comes with the knowing soul of those who have been blessed with only the most, the best, the farthest and most perplexing of soliloquies, whence I had stumbled for too far upon a youth most imbibed within her custodian's deepest-"

"Enough," she said, and his words stopped abruptly.

The diner fell silent again. Everyone was watching, waiting to see the outcome of the unlikely romance. Vriska was always getting in trouble around town, and Andrew was well known for being clumsy, lazy, and generally a little bit insane. Glancing around, I could almost see the ships sailing in the other spectators' eyes.

"The fine lady would perhaps care for a song," Andrew said hopefully, beginning to wave his arms around in a strange kind of dance. "I have such one prepared: Oh how long I have waited / my breath cautiously baited / and the spider spins her lies / I am trapped as her hapless flies-"

"_Enough!"_she hissed, raising to her feet. "Shut _up _for once in your miserable life, Human!"

He did fall silent, but continued to do the weird dance.

Terezi was laughing so hard by now that she seemed to be in tears, and she banged on the table with her fists until a fork clattered to the ground.

Andrew held his palm out to Vriska, still dancing.

"No need, milady, fear not, the universe is safe in the hands that created it," he said, as he bent to pick up the fork, and the entire diner went wild. I couldn't see them, thank god, but, as I learned from Rose later, he was wearing some sort of lace contraption underneath the waitress skirt, which was made apparent when he bent to retrieve the "universe".

Never a dull moment at Doc's. Maybe that should be their slogan.

"Why, you pathetic, low-life, Human scrap of scum," Vriska hissed. "I've seen you around. I _know _you, don't I? You've been _stalking _me! Normally I wouldn't mind, but you're nothing but the lowest sort of lowblood human, and... and I don't even like lowblood _Trolls, _what_ever_ the rumors are! You actually thought you had a _chance _with _me? _Don't make me laugh, don't even try!"

By now she was standing over him, towering and terrifying, her long hair, swept back in the style of Farrah Fawcett, bristling behind her like a cat's tail.

She was pretty beautiful, actually.

He was on the ground at her feet, literally on his knees. I thought of Groucho Marx, _I've heard of bringing a guy to his knees, but this is ridiculous!_

"I-" Andrew began, but she cut him off.

"If that's an apology," she spat, "I don't want to hear it. And if it's not, what the hell _else _could you have left to say? You've managed to ruin my night, soil my mood, and _murder _what little respect I had for your race, and I expect you to be sorry!

"I-" he began again, but she turned, angrier than ever, and violently ripped the door open. She hesitated then, and the only sound was Terezi's laughter, which was beginning to border on manic. She laughed and laughed and laughed, her howls of mirth uninterrupted and unending, even when her nose began to bleed, an opaque river of teal that ran into her mouth and sprayed across her table.

Vriska stood straighter, aiming a poison glare at Andrew. "And I wasn't going to pick up that fork, anyway!" she shouted, then let the door slam shut with a clang of the bells attached. All present burst into applause.


	7. Squarewave

My first day working at DOC'S was insane! No, scratch that, my first WEEK was insane.

It was because of the robot rights bill thing, that's why I could work there. Before, there was a law that any sentient fabricated being, like robots or game grubs or whatever, couldn't function in Human society on EARTH. There weren't any laws like that on ALTERNIA, I don't think, but then, they don't have ANY laws there, I'm pretty sure, and some laws are kinda important, like about murder and stuff. So even though my artificial life could have been a lot cooler among the aliens, I was glad to live on EARTH with my STRI-GUYS, even if DA never seemed to like me very much. I liked him enough for the both of us.

DI brought me to DOC'S one day, and I was REALLY excited. I hadn't been out of the apartment in forever, not counting chilling on the roof. It was super awesome to see cars and stuff up close, and I got to download the sensation of a dog's fur into my memory, even! It was so great, just walking around and being all the way down here instead of way the hell up there.

DI brought me in early Monday morning, before DOC'S had been open very long, and I was stared at plenty when we got in there, but I was flying too high to care much. Not literally, I wasn't literally flying, because DI never gave me like rocket booster feet or anything. It's an expression, 'flying high'. It means you're really super hella kickflipping pumped about something.

In the back of the diner, because DOC'S was a diner, it was called DOC'S Diner, and it was a diner, in the back there were three doors, and the one on the right went to this apartment sort of place, and everything was hella green, green like a St. Patrick's day sale at a supermarket. A supermarket is a place where you can buy a lot of stuff, everything from peanut butter to floor wax. DI told me all about them, they sound truly awesome.

The green place was where the owner lived. I guess. He could have just used it as an office, but what kind of office has candy everywhere? No office I'VE ever been in, even if his was the first office to be in, for me. Still. candy bowls seemed like a home thing. DA always has bowls lying around, but mostly they have chips and sometimes phones and game controllers in, but they were basically the same thing.

The owner was a robot like me. I guess. He had a big round head that was all white, compared to me he was like a whack sort of futuristic thing, like some sort of _BACK TO THE FUTURE_ thing, and I was like JOHNNY 5, but without all the rad stickers. All the green was making my optics a little haywire, or maybe it was my actual wires, I don't know. Something about that place made my pistons crackle with energy and my screws jump with electricity. He said to call him MR. VANILLA MILKSHAKE, for some reason.

DI and talked for a long time, I didn't want to interrupt but I asked if I could take a look around because standing still is just so BORING and it's kinda hard on my motor too and the round-head weirdo said I could have as much candy as I wanted, so I took a whole bunch of little blue equals-equals-lesser-than-greater-then-carrots which I couldn't eat but I took them anyway, stuffed them in my pocket, still a little unused to wearing clothes but DI said it was part of the new law thing so I had to. I could get used to having pockets. Before if I wanted to carry something I had to open up my chassis plates with an actual flathead screwdriver and store it inside and be careful of all the other stuff thats already in there, wires and plating and yo-yos and drawings and stuff for DA? Sometimes DA asks me to carry stuff for him and I always say yes because I like him and I want him to like me but then he never asks for it back or he keeps asking me to hold it then give it back then hold it again, and DI says I shouldn't let DA tease me but I don't really know what teasing is because it sometimes is the same thing as being sincere?

So after DI talked to the white head guy for like, FOREVER! we went back out into the diner and then into the white swinging doors with the little circle windows in and we talked to MISS JANEY, I didn't even know she would be there but she was and that was just about the most awesome thing that could have happened! MISS JANEY was very excited for me too, she got me a whole outfit to wear just like DI's, except the suspenders were red and the bowtie was blue, and she said she was so happy that I could work at DOC'S and she hugged me and her kitchen companion MS. PAINT patted me on the head.

After that DI said I couldn't talk to him too much while we were working but I could say stuff sometimes and he told me to save everything I wanted to say to him in a memo and we could talk about it later and then he gave me a mop and told me to mop things that needed mopping and went away to do his job! I was so excited I could barely keep my fans spinning fast enough, I thought I was going to overheat or something, and there was some beeping sounds happening but very quiet so I don't think anyone was disturbed by them.

I had a cleaning companion just like MISS JANEY had a kitchen companion, and her name was MISS MEENAH and she was not really the nicest Troll I ever knew, even though I didn't know too many Trolls at all. She was very interesting to see, though, and I saved a few snapshots of her on my internal hard drive because she was so strange, she had long long keratin strands, the thing they call hair, and they were all braided up, and she kept them all piled on top of her head like an ice cream cone, and I asked her one time about it and she said /It's called a beehive you Human piece of metal/ and I was very flattered because no one ever called me a Human before.

It was so awesome to work, my optics had never experienced so many Humans or Trolls or flowers or trees or anything, and there was so much food, I really liked food even though I couldn't eat it, I liked looking at it and when people ate it it was just like in the commercials when they make faces like it's SO GOOD! I got to see all the people that DI and DA are always talking about, JAKE and JOHN and KARKAT and TEREZI and so many people! I wanted to talk to everyone but I was also very determined to do awesome at my job so I concentrated on sweeping and bussing tables and stuff and I had tons of fun, even though MISS MEENAH didn't seem to like her job very much, and her job was pretty much mine, but I was having loads of fun, even though all the work was really hard on my pistons and joints and my hard drive was working doubletime to track everything I was seeing and hearing and learning, and I was just so happy to see everyone, see all the colors and hear all the voices with different accents and stuff, and even though my Stri-guys had told me before all about Trolls I kind of never knew they were actually grey? And their horn shapes were way awesome, I wrote in a memo for DIRK that I wanted a pair even though I knew he wouldn't make me any.

There was also a lot of drama that happened at DOC'S, like the kind of stuff that happens on the soap operas DI likes to watch, like I had to clean up after a lady Troll with the prettiest cerulean blood cut her side on her friend's knife, and later a Troll with a stripey sweater around his neck got in a yelling contest with one with long long hair and gills, and after that three Trolls were laughing at a Human's blood color after they made him show it to them from the inside of his face. DI had to throw them all out for fighting, I didn't really realize they were breaking rules I just thought they were having Human fun. DI said I still have a long way to go before I can think about myself as Human but either way there's still always something interesting to record.

The most interesting thing I saw my first week, that was on a Wednesday morning when the diner was barely open, and there was a big commotion happening, all loud as heck upstairs from the diner, which was where there were some apartment type spaces, DI had told me they were rented out to a detective agency. I thought that sounded real awesome, but I kind of thought sleuthing would be a quieter activity, that morning there was a lot of running and shooting and yelling happening over our heads, just like in the movies.

Then the fabled detectives appeared! There were two of them; they ran down the spiral staircase in the back of the diner, yelling and shooting, and they were so different from the image my motherboard had projected that I even stopped sweeping for a minute and took a few snapshots. They were shorter than me and they all had hats on their round heads just like in the movies, and their guns were candy colors like pink and white and orange and yellow, and they were shooting at each other and yelling real loud all kinds of words as they ran through the diner and out into the street! I swept up their bullet casings when they were gone but those were also candy colors and my processers were tricked for a minute they they actually were candy but that would be weird to shoot at someone with.

The real excitement came though when a troupe of musicians came into the diner around lunchtime and they were so tall! And they had the same kind of shell exterior skin stuff as MSP has, but theirs was all black and there was a very tall lady one with them which was all white and they came in for lunch and ordered tons of food and ate every crumb and then they went into DOC'S office/apartment for a long long time and when they came out they started handing out fliers for their band which was called THE EXILES and the fliers said they would be playing live music at the diner on Saturdays! I was so excited my flashlight accidentally turned on and I shined it right in someone's optics, I mean eyes, and they stumbled and bumped into someone who bumped someone else and pretty much the whole diner was a big mess after that but I cleaned it up pretty much without the help of MISS MEENAH, she said it was my fault but my JIMMYCARD said otherwise. A JIMMYCARD, by the way, is a thing I made all by myself, it's a data card that plugs into my palm slot and it's supposed to tell me when someone is lying or if something is a bad idea but DI says it doesn't work right. My JIMMYCARD said otherwise but DI would never lie so I guess he was right. Anyway I cleaned everything up.

Around closing I got to meet a lady Troll waitress that was so pretty I took a billion snapshots, she had curly white hair and curvy orange horns and she was very nice, she said she was sure it would be a pleasure to work with me and I accidentally beeped real loud at her because she was TALKING TO ME and I was crazy embarrassed but she laughed and said I was darling, she said it just like that, /Aren't you darling?/ and I thought my legs were going to give out the pressure in them was so high, I had to excuse myself so I could go let out some steam out back, cracked open the shiny casing of my cheek and turned the dial there, I almost burned the guy waitress, ANDREW, cause he was out back too taking a break, I almost burned him with the steam that came out of me but it was all good, he was fine.

I was kinda not so much in a hurry to go back inside though, cause that lady Troll waitress was still in there and I was still pretty embarrassed that I beeped at her, most of the time I can keep my functions under control. So i stayed out there with ANDREW for a while, he said I should call him HUSSIE instead of ANDREW, and then he asked me why I had so much steam pressure, said when that happens you have to make sure there isn't a buildup or a blockage anywhere in your piping. Then he said no, he wasn't a robot, but he had a lot of experience with bringing creations to life so I told him about the lady Troll, he said her name is CALLIOPE and she's not really a Troll, but he wouldn't say anything more about that and when I asked suddenly everything outside got all smoky and dark and a monster thing started stomping up the street! He said we should probably get back inside all calm-like, and he said he didn't know anything about the monster thing, a huge grey thing with tiny horns and arms and long big legs, he said he didn't know where it had come from but better go back inside until the detective guys from before came back.

So that was my first week, it was pretty much off the chain, but whatever, my artificial life is just really really awesome now, and that's all there is to it.


	8. Once Upon A Weekend

The Earth time is six twelve on a Friday evening, and the Alternian sun is just beginning to rise. Terezi Pyrope is in her hive, because over the Earth weekend her only plans are to not get killed by the unrelenting sun.

She is in her respiteblock, arranging all her scalemates according to scent, trying to decide who should be last in line, Prince Puceclaw or Sir Spicyprongs, when her ears perk at the sound of a peculiar scratching noise, echoing from somewhere in her hive. A slurp of the clock on her computer dashboard tells her it is still much too early for the broods of the undead to have reached her hive yet, as they spend the dark nights hidden deep in the sandy deserts, and there are no deserts where she lives. They usually only manage to make their way through the forest near the end of the day, thus, the scratching at her door, no doubt, is unlikely to be one.

Still, she arms herself to the fangs with nooses and heavy throwing things and her trusty cane before venturing downstairs, pausing beside her door to steel herself. A sniff around the edges of the door reveals the guest to be someone she knows. Scent alone, however, is not enough to reveal whether he is a friend or a foe.

She throws open the door, poised to strike, and he, too, is in a defensive position. Neither move as they speak.

"Hey, Gamzeez," says she, her grey knuckles whitening under her grip on her cane.

"Terezi," he says, voice barely a rumble of sound.

They stand for several minutes, staring each other down. Terezi can smell the bright scent of recently shed blood on his breath, and Gamzee admires the way her clothes are twisted around her, evidence of a recent floor nap.

"I'm not letting you in my hive," she says. "That would be stupid as well as suicidal."

"Hey, I'm not asking," he shrugs. "But I am gonna point out that the sun is coming up, here, pretty soon."

"Wow, I didn't know you could tell time," she hisses, glancing around. The trees around her hive are thick, and the sun is not visible yet, but the dense foliage will offer minimal protection from the sun's harsh rays, soon. "How did you even get here, you live by the stupid ocean."

He shrugs again, and she grinds her teeth. Of course, she knows better than to ask him serious questions. Not when he is trying to get something from her.

"Well, you're not coming in. You can just fry out there, for all I care," she says, but she makes no move to close the door.

He steps forward, just a little. "Terezi," he says.

She turns away, crossing her arms.

"Tereziii..."

She tips her head to the side, still facing away. "Oh, is someone there? It must not be someone I want to talk to, or they would already be inside."

He takes that as his cue to come in, so he does, slamming the door behind him. Without a word or so much as a glance back, Terezi starts up the stairs back to her block.

Gamzee grins, deciding not to tell her there is scalemate stuffing in her hair.

* * *

The time is three-thirty on a Saturday afternoon when John Egbert, Human non-extrodinaire, pulls his extra-terrestrial friend, Karkat Vantas, through his front door.

"My Dad is at work, so we have the house all to ourselves," John says, excitedly shoving Karkat down onto his couch. "Don't ask me what he does, because I'm not supposed to say, or even know, I think."

"I wasn't going to, because I couldn't care less," Karkat says, standing up again. "Knowing your man-Lusus thing isn't here is supposed to mean what, exactly?"

"Well," John ticks off the list on his fingers, "we can be as loud as we want, eat whatever we want, go to bed whenever we want, watch whatever we want..."

"Watch whatever?" Karkat asks, a hint of excitement coloring his voice, "I can't wait to see what your Human Steve Wilkos is like."

John laughs, leading the way to his kitchen. "Funny! But I already told you what the plan is: Ghostbusters one and two, then the Breakfast Club, the Goonies, Ghost, Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, then maybe Little Shop of Horrors?"

Karkat groans, sticking his head in the oven. Not because he is attempting to use suicide as a form of humor, but because he has no idea what an oven is. "Your human movie titles are so frustrating. Like, 'is this movie terrible? I don't know! I guess I'll have to actually watch this crap to see, instead of just skimming the title like a normal person'. To be safe, I'll just assume they all _are_ terrible, and move on to the part where I suggest we watch something actually worth my time."

John laughs, pulling a packet of Pop-Secret out of a cupboard and throwing it in the microwave. "Calm down. You're going to love Rick Moraines, just you wait. Steve Martin, too; he makes a surprisingly good evil dentist, even though in real life I think he's probably pretty nice. But Ghostbusters first. Maybe you'll even find it enlightening."

Karkat rolls his eyes, not sure what many of the things his friend mentioned are. A dentist, he thinks, is obviously some sort of professional fighter or something. Someone who dents things. A dentist, by that definition, can only be evil to begin with. He rolls his eyes and wonders exactly what horrors John's Human culture have in store for him.

* * *

"Karkat, you're not supposed to eat the burnt ones."

"The black ones? But they taste better."

"Okay, more for me, I guess."

The time is five o'clock when Karkat, who is just beginning to grasp the many buttons on a TV remote, pauses the movie, only a fraction of the way through Ghostbusters.

"This doesn't make sense," he says loudly, because he says most things loudly.

"What do you mean?" Says John through a mouthful of popcorn. "The demon lord Gozer is in Dana's fridge. She went to the Ghostbusters, but Venkman is too distracted by her charms to do his experiments right."

"Who's the Egbertish-looking thing in the hallway?"

"Har har, that's Rick Moraines, the guy I was telling you about. He's just her neighbor, but he's gonna be important later."

The boys sit in silence then. John is staring at the frozen screen, on which Venkman, Stantz and Spengler are toasting their first customer, and Karkat is digging through the bowl of popcorn, looking for more burnt pieces.

John says, after a long moment, "Hey, Karkat?"

"Yes, Egbert?"

"You haven't been trolling us much since we did the whole culture clash thing."

"Your point, Egbert?"

"I was just thinking, could you still do it? I mean, if you had to."

Karkat sits up fully, looking John in the eye. "What are you saying? Are you saying I don't have what it takes anymore?"

"Not at all!" John protests. "Well, sort of. I mean, I was talking about it with Rose the other day and she thinks your inspiration, or whatever, is lost now that we're all friends."

Karkat stands up very suddenly, scattering popcorn all over the floor. "I will have you know, John Human Egbert, that I am just as capable, nay, _more capable than ever, _of the most fear-inspiring trolling any Human has ever experienced. It's in my fucking race's _name_ for Human Pete's sake."

John laughs, crossing his arms. "Prove it, then."

"Prove it?" Karkat laughs until he snorts. "Is that a dare? You know how I feel about dares."

John stands too, then picks up the phone, a heavy rotary-style one, and hands it to Karkat. "I'm gonna call Rose, and if you can troll her good and hard, I'll never doubt your skills again."

Karkat glares. "Just this once, I'm going to forgive your idiocy. You are clearly suffering some sort of psychotic break. I don't have to prove anything to you, Egbert."

John starts dialing. "Hey, I'm just the messenger. It was Rose who said it, tell her. In fact, _show _her. You know she only believes cold, hard facts."

Karkat glares, holding the phone, while John listens to the receiver.

"Miss Lalonde, ma'am? Yes, I would like to speak to Rose, please, if she's in." he grins at Karkat, putting the receiver against his chest. "You ready?"

"Give me that thing," Karkat snarls, snatching the phone away. He puts it to his ear, listens a moment, then says, "Rose, I Human love you. I feel this Human emotion so strongly that I want to Human marry you, and be the Human father of your Human offspring. Our Human wedding will be beautiful, and we will release seven Human thousand feathery Earth shit factories into the Earth sky to commemorate the event, and our Human honeymoon will be on the Earth moon in a glass mansion, and we will live there for ten Human days and seven Alternian nights, which is like eight of your Human days, I think? Our Human love is a universal constant, as I will tell you ceaselessly as we stare at the Human stars and make our Human love so passionately that our ancestors will weep golden tears at the sheer beauty of it."

He hangs up abruptly. Then, handing the phone back to John, says, "You may now begin kissing my ass in apology."

John laughs, putting the phone back on the end table. "Yeah, you sure showed me. Let's finish the movie, okay?"

Karkat slumps back onto the couch. "Not without more hot black corn. It was the one thing making this crap bearable."

John rolls his eyes but obligingly heads for the kitchen. Karkat stares at the frozen scene on the screen for a moment, and is startled by the sharp, tinny ring of the phone beside him.

"What?" he snaps, having answered without thinking.

"How much do you love me?"

The voice is Rose's, but Karkat doesn't betray his surprise. "So much," he says instantly. He is on a roll, he decides. "Come with me. We'll run away and... what do you call it? The thing where you get married?"

"Elope," she says coolly.

"Yeah, that. Let's Human elope. Pack your things and meet me at Doc's Monday after school, and I'll take you places your inferior Human think pan couldn't even imagine. Pink sand and white skies. Green seas and orange clouds. Yellow trees and purple clover. Trust me, you won't regret it."

"Is this in earnest?" She asks after a moment. "Are you serious, or is this about what I told John to tell you I said?"

"Oh, I'm serious," Karkat says, twirling his finger around the curly cord of the phone. "I'm as serious as this Human doucheface I'm staring at right now, Peter Venkman. Just like he was serious about starting his own bullshit ghost business, I'm serious about this. Human marry me, Rose, and I'll make you the happiest Human female either of us has ever met."

She hangs up then, and Karkat shrugs. John comes back with one bowl of popcorn and one of burnt cinders, they finish their movie, move on to the next, and eventually fall asleep on the couch sometime in the middle of the Goonies.

* * *

The Earth time is six twelve on a Saturday evening, and Terezi is on the floor of her block, surrounded by her beloved stuffed dragons. Under normal circumstances, this would make her happy.

She is not happy.

Part of her unhappiness is because of her computer. It is chiming every few moments, meaning someone, or several someones, are trying to get her attention. She tries to ignore it, but the only distraction she has at hand is Gamzee, who is the other part of her unhappiness, as he is biting her tongue in a way she does not particularly like. She likes less, however, the idea of telling him that. This is because of the last time she told him about something that bothered her. She had said, "Ugh, I hate it when people just come over unannounced," and, well, here he is.

The computer is still chiming.

Instead of saying anything, she hopes to aggravate him more then he can her. She scores his sides, under his shirt, with her long nails. She can smell just a hint of his blood, under all the Faygo on his breath, and grins, bringing a knee up to press against his newly wounded side. He responds by grabbing her wrist, tight, tight, and she can feel the calcium rods shifting under his awesome strength. She shivers, remembering how he had broken all the bones in Nepeta's arm easily, during one of the many roleplaying sessions they had acted out. She remembers the sound, the muffled snap, as his hand squeezes her wrist ever tighter.

She licks him, a slow, breathy lick up the underside of his tongue, and then pulls back and punches him, hard, _really _hard, square in the cheek.

He growls, staring down at her as his blood starts to color his new bruise. He is wondering when she is going to do something about the computer, which is beginning to chime in time with his heart, which is beating only slightly faster than usual. As a highblood, his body is naturally programmed to last for eons, and so it takes a lot to up his heart rate. Terezi doesn't know, _can't _know, how fast she can get it beating just with a single grin.

She reaches up, tongue poking out of her mouth, cupping his jaw in her hand, sliding her palm up until she can reach his newborn bruise with her thumb, jabbing at it with her claw. He only smiles and says, "I thought you said you wanted to talk."

"I said no such thing," she hisses, grabbing fistfuls of his hair, winding it around her fingers. His hands are like bruises on her skin, hot and strong, they feel like her cheeks when she blushes. She did blush, she is blushing, and she touches her cheek tenderly, hand still wrapped up, almost expecting to feel the burn of them on her hand, like an orange coil on a stove.

"Well, what are we doing, here," he says softly, pulling gently against her tugging hands. "You don't do meaningless quadrants, right?"

She frowns; the chiming is driving her mad. "I thought we just established I didn't want to talk."

So he grins and kisses her, drawing her up in his arms, and she scrapes her teeth against his, claws dragging up his arms until they are warm with blood close to the surface. The chiming of the computer is incessant, and soon they have had enough.

Terezi groans and pries her tongue off of Gamzee's, and Gamzee groans and pries his hips off of Terezi's, and they both groan the kind of groan only a teenager encumbered with unexpected chores is capable of.

"Who," Terezi says, lying on the floor, eyes shut tight, "the fuck."

Gamzee, now straddling her, leans over to her desk, peering at her smeared screen.

"Vriska, Eridan," he says, mousing over the flashing names, "...and Tavros."

Terezi sighs, propping herself up on her elbows. "I'm busy. Tell them I'm busy."

"Busy?" he grins, taking the opportunity to take a swig of one of the many open bottles of Faygo lying around Terezi's respiteblock. "Certainly, your Tyrrany. And what shall I say you're so busy doing?"

She growls at him, more teeth than noise.

He nods, then begins typing, speaking the words as he writes them, "Sorry, can't talk right now, I'm all getting my motherfuckin' chill on with a motherfucker who ain't y-"

Terezi, in an incredible display of strength, pulls herself up from the floor and slaps him, drawing blood.

He laughs and he kisses her, and she bites him, and then pulls herself out from under him and knees him in the face, but not very hard, on her way to her computer.

Her glasses are on her desk, beside the model volcano she had made for a school project the year before. She hadn't gotten a very good grade on it, probably because of the clay figures that dotted the volcano's sides, falling prey to the replica lava that poured out the top.

She turns to her computer, but it is hard for her to make out the words on the screen, due to all the Faygo in her system. The scents are overpowering, so she has to resort to licking the screen.

AG: Terezi I'm so sorry!  
AG: Terezi?  
AG: Terezi, don't ignore me!  
AG: Tereziiiiiiii...  
GC: SORRY, C4N'T T4LK R1GHT NOW, 1M 4LL G3TT1ING MY MOTH3RFUCK1N CH1LL ON W1THLKHLKJ  
AG: Huh?  
GC: N3V3RM1ND  
GC: WH4T 4R3 YOU SORRY FOR, VR1SK4, BE1NG 4 B1TCH?  
GC: 1T'S 4BOUT T1M3  
AG: No, idi8, I'm not apologizing to you, I'm apologizing for him!  
GC: H1M WHO?  
AG: Karkat, of course! ::::o  
GC: WH4T  
GC: WH4T 4R3 YOU T4LK1NG 4BOUT?  
AG: I just heard! Apparantly he's le8ving you for that human, Rose!

"No," Terezi says under her breath. Behind her, Gamzee is peeling off his shirt. She can smell his cuts, like the inside of an oven, all hot and salty.

GC: YOUR D3SP3R4T1ON 1S P4TH3T1C.  
AG: I'm serious! He proposed to her over the phone!  
GC: WH4TS TH4T?  
AG: It's a human thing I think, where one asks the oth8r to be m8sprits for the rest of their lifespans.  
AG: So I guess you're down a quad8, huh?  
AG: You know, I never told you this, 8ut I think the two of us would make a gr8 team, don't you?  
GC: 1  
GC: WH4T  
AG: Come on! Don't you remem8er how much fun we had last summer? If we teamed up, we could 8e unstoppa8le!  
GC: WH4T DO YOU W4NT NOW, VR1SK4?  
GC: YOU M4Y B3 POPUL4R ON 34RTH W1TH TH3 HUM4NS, BUT 1 C4N SM3LL THROUGH YOUR L13S, R3M3MB3R?  
AG: If that's true, then you should know that I'm telling the truth!  
GC: 4LL 1 C4N SM3LL 1S YOU TRY1NG TO G3T ON MY GOOD S1D3. YOU FORG3T, NON3 OF MY S1D3S 4R3 GOOD.  
GC: 1'M TOO BUSY FOR YOUR BULLSH1T R1GHT NOW. S33 YOU MOND4Y.

Terezi sighs, sinking to her knees, grabbing a half-flat Faygo on the way down and draining it in one gulp. She pulls off her glasses and then her shirt, wincing as she feels the cool air hit the raised skin along her scratches and bites. She suddenly feels very tired.

The trouble is, Vriska's words don't smell anything like lies. They smell suspiciously like the truth, and it is a truth Terezi doubts she can handle.

Karkat? And Rose?

Impossible.

Sensing the change in mood, Gamzee grabs her by the wrist, dragging her away from her computer, outside of her block itself, and into the hallway outside. He pins her against the door and he presses his forehead to hers and he twirls a lock of her hair around his fingers.

"I liked you better when I hated you," he whispers, and when her tears begin to fall he lets her take the lead, and she kisses him bruisingly, and he encourages her to take out her feelings on him, and the Earth time is four o'clock on Monday morning when she at last has calmed down, and she wakes up in time for school bruised and alone, for even Gamzee has left her alone.


End file.
